


boys & flowers

by nonbinarybead



Category: South Park
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Kyle Broflovski/Craig Tucker - Freeform, M/M, Summer Romance, cryle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 53,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23571151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarybead/pseuds/nonbinarybead
Summary: Kyle Broflovski is an intelligent and compassionate young man with a troubled past. He often lets his emotions envelop him and down to his core, isn't sure what role he plays as a person of this world. One summer he nabs a job as a lab assistant, sure that this career path will help him ensure some mental stability... until Craig Tucker ruins everything.
Relationships: Kyle Broflovski/Craig Tucker, Stan Marsh/Wendy Testaburger
Comments: 49
Kudos: 51





	1. marigold (passion & creativity)

**Author's Note:**

> For Mark.  
> Because he will undoubtedly have to answer all my chemistry questions as I write this.

I’ll never forget the way he looked at me when he said it. It was the same concerned look he would give me back when we first met, stirring a unique new cruelness within me. I wanted to slap it off his face.

It all started with that look as soon as he entered the lab and saw me. Disappointment. 

Anytime I’m in the lab now, I can sit and imagine him there, looking at me, hands on the black matte counter, shy sunshine blurring through the glass windows and crowning his head.

Sometimes it felt like he was studying me rather than listening to me.

When I think of that summer, all the scenes and dialogue layer on top of each other, the stacking of molding bricks held together by the gunk of my heart, until it all crumbles upon that one strike of a sentence:

“Yeah, I think I need us to be just friends.”

I wanted to say, “Fuck you. Fuck you, Craig.” 

I didn’t. I couldn’t.

For a while, I would wake up from dreaming about him and say it into my pillow, hoping my curses would slither to him and fill his lungs with poison. I wanted him unhappy. I wanted any bad thing short of death to happen to him. I wanted. Then I would chastise myself for wanting these horrible things. I knew it was just a veil for my hurt.

But if he were to say anything to me, even the smallest word of remorse, all my emotional reserves would come drain and I would start all over again.

* * *

It was my fault, mostly.

I have a tendency to squander a good thing when it’s happening. I’m so afraid of having the good thing ripped away that I sever it before it can rot away on its own. I overthink. Sabotage. Destroy. I do it, so underneath, I can confirm my fears. My biggest obstacle has always been myself. At least, that’s what Stan tells me. That’s what he tells everyone when they’re having a problem. _You’re always your own biggest enemy_. I think he’s heard enough stories from spending 12 years carving saturated tigers, pin-up girls, and grim reapers into the limbs of Colorado’s finest oversharers. 

I told him once when we were sitting in a booth at Coney Island Boardwalk: “You know how we squeeze things because we think they’re cute? It’s because deep down we want to squash and kill the thing so it stops being cute.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said, crinkling his nose at me while sketching in a notebook. A dab of chili had fallen on the corner from lifting a fry to his mouth, and now he was implementing the stain into his design. 

“You don’t have to believe it. It’s science.”

He thought about it for a moment. “I guess it makes sense, actually. Humans are pretty fucked up.”

He ended up drawing a very detailed and round butt. You can guess what purpose the chili stain served.

In his own way, Stan is a bit of a therapist. Maybe things are more clear when you see the world for what it is: shapes and lines. His wife, Wendy, is usually the one to cock her head and listen intently, taking in every word of your story as if she were there herself. I guess that’s just her nurse nature. 

Sometimes I feel like my brain is a pan of Jiffy Popcorn - you know, those foil-covered ones that you hover over a stove-top and eventually: _pop, pop, pop._ The foil rises and expands into a great dome until it finally splits open. They’ve always reminded me of the eggs in the _Alien_ movies. Therapy has been like that for me. My therapist is the person agitating the pan over the stove and all the kernels are feelings and memories and she keeps agitating and agitating until _pop, pop, pop -_ the memories burst into revelations (sometimes more problems) and they just keep _popping_ until I’m dizzy and it feels like my head is swelled. 

I’ve been told that it’ll get worse before it gets better. Point A will never reach point B without zigzagging around points Q and W first. I’m still waiting for my brain to split open.

It really was mostly my fault. 

I pushed first, then he pulled, so I pulled, then he pushed again - stronger, farther than I could have ever dreamed of doing. I didn’t push for no reason, though. If someone outside the bubble could have seen what I had seen, they would know that I had a reason.

I hope you don’t think I’m an unreliable narrator here. I’ve had time to round out those popping thoughts, and I know that our memories play tricks on us. They conform to what we want them to be. They synchronize with our pain. 

Yes, I wish I could make up something more interesting.

But this is my truth, and it’s just as important as anything else. Won’t that be enough for you?

* * *

I have a garden.

Not a very large one, but it’s enough for some cherry tomatoes and some flowers of my choice. It runs along the edge of the back window of our living room. After all the frost is gone and I can taste the heat on my tongue, I work, pulling weeds and planting seeds, thinking about what I’ve done. Cherry tomatoes grow very fast and dare I say, fruitfully, so Kenny eases the surplus by picking them off and eating while I work. He’s allergic and his face always ends up looking like the tomato he ate, but we can’t get him to stop. The kid is insane, sometimes twitchy and manic but he’s a wildly good illustrator and Stan saw enough potential in him to snap him up for an apprenticeship. 

Anyway, it’s good work and I think more people should garden. It gives you something to do with your hands while your mind races. It’s difficult to be mad with anything or anyone when you’re surrounded by lavender. You can plant your feet on the warm soil and know that despite everything else, you are still here, real, and grounded. 

A lot of stories begin in gardens. This one does too.

It started at the beginning of May. Another rough semester at the University of Colorado - Boulder had come and gone. All I needed was to get through this summer, then get through the autumn semester and I would have my Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science with a minor in Chemistry. 

It had been a long seven years. I could have finished sooner, but I missed a few semesters due to homelessness and I just couldn’t concentrate. I would have lived in the dorms at school but there was no way I was leaving my roommate, Cartman, out on his own. We spent a long time sleeping in his Toyota Echo and showering at a 24-hour fitness place. I worked during the day, traveling door to door asking people if they want their houses painted. If they weren’t home, I’d leave the company’s information on a plastic tab around their door handle. Cartman would go out and try to find a job to supplement his unpaid tattoo apprenticeship. It was difficult to find jobs at first since most places ask about your criminal record on the application. Both of our records state that our time in Zebulon Pike Detention Center won’t negatively affect our work ethic, as we have been fully reformed into fresh-faced, dewy-eyed citizens. But it can still intimidate people. Still, we pressed on, and now here I was planting marigold seeds, the back of my neck already burning in the 9 am sun. 

Cartman opened the sliding glass door and called out to me: “Kyle, phone!”

He held out my tiny Android (I don’t fuck with iPhones), blaring the _What’s New Scooby-Doo?_ theme song. I quickly peeled off my gloves and went to him. As I got closer, I saw he must have just woken up - no shirt, brown hair sticking up on all ends, squinting behind Jeffrey Dahmer-esque gold-rimmed glasses

“I’m going to have this stuck in my head all day now, thanks,” he said as I reached for it.

I winked at him. He slammed the door shut and retreated back into air conditioning. I didn’t take it personally. I’ve seen him much worse and it all goes away with a gallon of coffee.

I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Hi. Kyle? This is Dr. Vince.”

Before she even said her name, I recognized her voice. She had always spoken like Snow White, even when she was painstakingly explaining advanced chemistry to confused students.

“Oh, hi Dr. Vince! How are you?”

“I’m great, how’s your summer going?”

I looked over at my just-started garden: clumps of soil everywhere, weeds strewn about, packets of seeds in a pile next to my shovel.

“It’s pretty peachy.”

“That’s good! So listen, you applied for the summer lab assistant job here about four days ago and I wanted to see if you were still interested in the job.”

My heart skipped. Finally, a job I _wanted_ to do! I could almost fly. “Yeah! 100%.”

“Awesome. There are a few other candidates but I wanted to ask you first. I know you’ll do a good job.”

“Really? I mean, I took your class, like, two years ago. I didn’t think you’d remember me.”

“Of course I remember you, Kyle. You were one of my best kids.”

She could probably feel me smiling on the other end of the phone when I spoke a quiet, shy, “thank you.”

“Can you start on Monday? You know where the lab is right? Room 334 in the Arts and Sciences building.”

“Yes. For an interview?”

“We can talk more about the job when you get here, but there’s a lot of work to do and I’d rather we all get started.”

“We all? Are there other students coming in with me?”

“Yes. It’ll be me, you, and my graduate assistant.”

“Oh, okay, sounds good.”

“Awesome! I’ll see you Monday at 8 am then, alright?”

“Yes! Thank you so much, I’m so excited.”

We exchanged goodbyes and then hung up. Cartman thumped the glass door with his toe, already holding two mugs of steaming coffee. I opened the door and he handed me a photo mug of me and my girlfriend, Bebe. I couldn’t wait to tell her.

“What was that all about? You sounded like a fucking schoolgirl.”

“I am a schoolgirl,” I said, taking a sip.

“Then you should totally flounce around in a little skirt in front of the shop so we can get more walk-ins.”

“Pretty sure that’ll drive customers away, but if you really want me to…”

He looked down at my pale thighs, knee pads, hairy shins, and shook his head. “Yeah, maybe not. So what’s going on?”

I smiled over the lip of the mug, said in a sing-songy voice, “I’m going to be a lab assistant.”

“Congrats.”

* * *

We all have that moment where we wish we could go back in time and warn ourselves about something. Usually, my intuition steers me in the right direction. Other times, anxiety kicks in and just makes me confused and sick. When I’m smitten with someone, all of those mental barriers go to hell in a handbasket. I want to go back, grab my own shoulders before putting on that lab coat, and say, “You’re already one wave short of a shipwreck. Craig Tucker is a hurricane.” 


	2. wildflower (bloom wherever you are planted)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Flowers are words, which even a babe may understand.” - Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe

Before my grandma died, she told me “for every awful person in this world, there are at least two more good people around the corner.” Working in customer service has proven this sentiment to be false. Sorry, grandma.

I’ve tried to be one of those good folk hanging around the corner, but after being verbally eviscerated for not having soy milk, for the blender being too loud, because we don’t have Smucker’s jelly packets for the bagels, because we don’t have tuna for the bagels, the fireplace not being real, the whipped cream melting into their hot drink after 40 minutes (sorry we don’t have space-age indestructible whipped cream?), the ceiling tiles should be WHITE instead of BLACK, “wHy DoN’T YoU GUyS hAvE A DRivE-tHRu?” I have found my patience for the public is as reliable as American government. 

So you can imagine how heavenly I felt, walking into South Perk to let them know they’d be without a manager for the summer. The day-time shift leader, Tweek, would have to take over. 

J-months (January, June, July) are usually quiet for restaurants and cafes here because it’s either right after a holiday, teachers and students are gone, people go on vacation/camping, etc. I’ve had people quit because they couldn’t cope with the reduced summer hours. But labor wages are a hard, unmoving budget and I don’t want to fuck anyone over or be unfair, so I always reduce my hours too. I figured with me being gone for a few months, the other baristas would get some more hours and be happy skirting along until pumpkin spice season.

Tweek freaked out.

“How the hell am I supposed to do this without people getting mad at me?” he asked, scratching out a shift he assigned himself for the 10th time. I was having him practice making a schedule. I had already shown him how to order food, supplies, and make bank deposits. This was the thing that was really hooking him by the mouth.

“No one will get mad at you. Just follow the availability chart and you’ll be okay.”

“Do you still want to work on weekends?”

The owner, Mohammed, asked me that earlier as well. It was a strong no.

“No, I think after 8 to 5 every weekday, I’ll be too tired to be here.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. You only asked.” I thought about it for a moment. “If someone is sick or there’s an emergency, I’ll come in.”

I glanced at the clock above our fake fireplace. Only an hour left of this shift, and I’d be gone for almost four months.

Our door chime went off, and Bebe walked in wearing a short, floral dress, her blonde curls tied into a high ponytail. A couple of guys sipping cappuccinos in a dark corner of the lobby stopped talking to look up at her. She always drew tons of looks when we were out in public together. When I would put my arm around her, their looks switched to me as if to say _ why is such a beautiful girl with that tall, gawky ginger dude with a huge scar across his cheek? _

At least, that’s what I imagine they think.

“Hey, Beyblade,” I walked around the counter and hugged her tight. We hadn’t spoken in two weeks since our last fight and I missed her. I broke the silence the night before by calling and announcing the new job.

“How’s it going?” she asked, not just to me, but to Tweek as well, who was still hovering over a spreadsheet.

“It’s going well,” I raised my voice a little. “Tweek is going to do a great job.”

He frowned at me. “I don’t think so.”

“You will.” I turned back to Bebe. “You want a macaron?”

“Sure.”

I went into the display case and pulled out a raspberry one (her favorite) and gave it to her. She sat in one of the cushioned chairs and nibbled until I wrapped up my shift and we could leave together.

* * *

Most people who know Bebe Stevens (aka “babevakarian”) don’t know about me. It’s almost a rule that if you’re a female Twitch streamer, your audience can’t know about your boyfriend/husband/partner. I’m all in favor of absolute transparency, so the fact that she abided this rule hurt me. I told her “You’re really good at video games, though. People will support you no matter what.” She told me that most of her audience places too much value in her being single. It frustrated me but I understood where she was coming from. It’s not like those virtual coin-tossers were a threat to me anyway. 

My favor in said transparency got me in trouble with her. Well, not in  _ trouble _ , per se, but something that left our relationship on shaking ground.

One night, after seeing a movie and having dinner at The Boulder Cork, we sat in her car talking outside my house. Not talking how we used to, though. Intimacy was drained, our conversations centered around general observations and long gaps of silence. She knew. I could feel her knowing, so I blurted: “I think I’m bisexual. Or pansexual. I’m not sure what the difference is yet.”

Now, I couldn’t exactly blame her for being a bit agitated - I could see her face and know her brain was doing the  _ pop, pop, pop. _ It can’t be easy to have a boyfriend for three years and then have him basically say,  _ hey, I like being with you, but I’ve also wondered what it would be like to have a dick in my mouth. _

She couldn’t look at me. Her hands slid down the steering wheel. “I don’t think I’m okay with that.”

“You’re not okay with my  _ existence _ ?”

“Well, I don’t think sexuality really defines existence, Kyle.”

“ _ Well,  _ I think that’s debatable, Bebe.”

“ _ Well, _ I’m not in the mood to debate right now. You just dropped a huge bomb on me.”

Another gap of silence. I couldn’t take it. 

“So what now?” I asked. “What do you want to do?”

“More like what do  _ you _ want to do?”

“Ball is in your court.”

“Not really.”

“Are we over?”

“I don’t know.”

I explained to her that I didn’t want to leave her, this shouldn’t change anything, I just didn’t want to keep any parts of myself away from her. It was like my words were hitting glass and sliding down onto the floor.

I left her car, unlocked the door to Marsh Tattoo, walked past the dark rooms filled with sculptures, art prints, taxidermied animals, treaded upstairs to the apartment where Cartman, Kenny, and I live, curled into bed and cried into my pillow until I fell asleep.

Now it was two weeks later, and we were in her car in the South Perk parking lot, the same tense silence like a wall between us. I wondered if Tweek could see us through the window.

“I think I’m getting in the way of you being who you want to be,” she said.

I knew she was referring to our other problems - not just me being bi.

She was never a fan of my tattoos. Sounds petty, but she really believes that when someone has a lot of them, it looks tacky. When we first started dating, I had a few of them already, including a full-color sleeve that Cartman did for a convention. Taking up my whole left arm, he created an outer space scene with beautiful planets and stars, and near the top of my shoulder, two orcas, a large one and a smaller one in the distance, swimming toward the moon. I told her it won an award at the Motor City Tattoo Expo and she said: “Congrats on being a prize donkey.”

She knew I wanted to get more, yet she fought me before every appointment. One evening, she exploded and said, fully intending to hit me where it hurt: “You just get all that shit put on you to distract from the ugly scar on your face.”

She knew exactly why my face is the way it is. She knew how traumatic it was for me. She has seen me try to grow a beard over it, but hair doesn’t grow through scar tissue. I lost it. “Maybe you should get something done to distract from your ugly personality.”

We’ve tried, but no amount of frivolous dates or make-up sex could heal the horrible things we’ve said to each other. I’ve been seeing more and more just how much hurt people, hurt people. 

“You’re not keeping me from being who I want to be,” I finally said. “I just wish you would accept the person I am now.”

“I don’t think I can keep circling around like this with you anymore. We need a break.”

“Oh, come on, Bebe…”

“I meant it. I care about you, but I think we should separate for a while.”

“For how long exactly?”

“I’m not sure.”

“...well, this sucks. Is that all you came here to tell me?”

She folded her hands in her lap, then gave me a sad smile. “I am really proud of you for getting this job. You’ve been working so hard.”

“Thank you.”

Gently, she reached out and stroked one of my curls. “Do you want me to take you home?”

“It’s a nice day. I think I’ll just walk.”

I didn’t understand - if I wasn’t the kind of man she wanted to settle down with now, then how could I ever be? Why did she want me in the first place?

* * *

I used to be a good kid.

You’d think my parents would feature me on their resumes, I was so respectful and obedient. I made straight A’s and was never afraid to stick up for others and raise my voice against injustice.

As I crawled into my teenager suit, something shifted. I could feel my skin tingling as I tossed and turned at night. The blankets were too warm so I ripped them off, then I got too cold so I put them back over my legs and wrapped my arms around my chest (I’ve slept like this ever since, a mummy, always embracing myself), and rolled around until I was dizzy enough to fall asleep. Sometimes I would hold the pillow over my face so hard that I’d pass out. 

I constantly scratched at my face, the incoming hairs of my beard, my scalp, muttering about how it felt like there was something pushing at my skin from the inside and making me itch. My mother would scold me about touching my face and then slap my hand away. I’d glare at her for touching me. I hated being touched. Even when a well-meaning relative gently patted my back, I jumped three feet. I stayed in my room most of the time and stopped talking to my family. I couldn’t stand them anymore. My clothes always felt like they were digging into my skin and my chest burned. I was convinced I was an alien, stuck in what seemed like a human body, and my parents just happened to pull me out of a crashed UFO in their backyard. In the crowded halls at school, it looked like everyone was staring at me as if they knew something I didn’t. I hated it. I couldn’t breathe.

My grades dropped. Hard. Queen Sheila and King Gerald came down on me more than they ever had before, verbally beating their scepters over my head like a disobedient serf. I was fucking miserable.

A few months before I turned 16, they hired a private tutor to meet me in the library after school. His name was Adam. He was 19 and about to transfer to Michigan State University from Park County Community College. It was around the time  _ Anchorman _ came out and Adam always wore Ron Burgundy shirts. Sometimes I would quote the movie to make him smile. He would reciprocate but always push me back to the assignment, keeping on me until I was done. I found myself trying harder because I didn’t want to disappoint him. 

One day, when the chilly spring days were unfurling into what would be a long, dry summer, the summer I would be arrested, Adam came by our house to see me one last time before final exams. I can close my eyes now and suddenly be back there, opening the front door and seeing him there in a white-tee shirt and jeans. The bottom of a small tribal tattoo peeked out from under his sleeve. His blonde hair was spiked.

When he greeted me, I couldn’t speak, but my mind was on fire with  _ oh no, oh no, oh no _ . I turned pink and looked down at my feet. I think I knew right then a couple of things that were different with me. 

In the middle of him talking about Avogadro’s number in our quiet, empty dining room, I got distracted and started staring at a silver, Celtic cross hanging around his neck. Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed, studying it in my palm. 

“Are you Christian?” I asked.

“My parents are.”

“We’re Jewish.”

“I’ve noticed.”

I sat still for a moment, letting the weighty pendant sit cushioned in my hand. Then I let it fall back, my hand turning into his chest, feeling the cloth of his shirt, his heart beating as I spread my fingers apart.

He peeled off my hand as if it were a stinking, dead fish.

“Nope, nope, nope.” He got up, sat in another chair farther from me. “You can’t touch me like that, Kyle.”

I blinked hard. What was I doing? I had no clue. Before I knew it, I felt the hot tears roll down my cheeks. He got up, came back, and handed me a tissue.

“It’s okay, Kyle. It’s okay.”

“I am so sorry,” I kept repeating between sniffles.

“It’s okay, you don’t… I understand what you’re going through.”

“I doubt that.”

“I do. I really do. But you have to be careful, Kyle. There are people out there who won’t be as nice as I was just now.”

We wrapped up our tutoring session at a distance. I never saw him again after that. I wish I could take it back. When I turned 19, I thought about what I would have done, had I been in his shoes and I know I wouldn’t have been able to be as nice.

After I turned 16, things got more serious. My parents and little brother knew  _ something _ happened, something had permanently changed in me, but no one had the balls to bring it up. My anxiety was much worse, and to cope with the noise and the people, I would stare off into the distance during class, letting my brain numb itself so I wouldn’t need to feel. I could pretend my body wasn’t there.

* * *

Cartman has a garden too, but it’s in his closet with a UV light and has a distinct smell when smoked (if you know, you know). The shop is closed on Sundays and Mondays. Sunday evenings are usually reserved for circle sessions in Stan and Wendy’s living room with their six cats.

I walked into the empty shop to see Cartman spread out over the lobby couch, staring at the ceiling. Kenny was on the other side, tipping back a container of cottage cheese to his mouth and slurping the curds.

Cartman mumbled, “ _ What’s new Scooby-Doo, comin’ after you…” _

Kenny stopped slurping to look at me somberly. “He’s already fucking baked.”

“Seems like you are too.”

“What gave it away?”

Kenny started out as more of a friend of the shop, like me. He told us about being the head waiter of the iHop night shift but wanted to have a comic book career or be a tattooer. He was also working on being a licensed piercer. For this last tattoo appointment, Cartman put on the final touches of Kenny’s  _ Kingdom Hearts _ back piece (“make it look like Ariel is about to swim into my butt”), while Stan flipped through Kenny’s sketchbook. He was hired as an apprentice, piercer, lives with us, and still works at iHop some nights. Sometimes when we’re roasting him, he’ll say “Excuse me, but I am iHop royalty and you cannot speak to me this way.”

“iHop discontinued red velvet pancakes, so they can fuck right off,” Cartman always said. He still hasn’t let it go after all these years.

“Oh, Kyle, I finally figured out what Eric is.” Kenny set down the cottage cheese and pulled out his phone. “He is what one would call a ‘trash boy’.”

Cartman groaned.

“What’s a trash boy?” I started fiddling with some pens on the counter.

“Like a fuck boy, but dirty,” Kenny read. “Trash boys usually have dad bods, stretched earlobes, hand tattoos, and stylish but unwashed hair. The trash boy probably plays in a metal band and does tattoos, and smokes a lot of weed. Trash boys are good for sex but are incapable of love*.”

I looked at Kenny’s stretched earlobes, his hand tattoos, felt my own small gauges and looked down at the phases of the moon tattooed on my fingers. 

“Uh, by that assessment, aren’t all of us kind of trash boys?”

“Damn straight.”

“Except Kahl,” Cartman coughed.

* * *

I had to hold on to each of their arms as we walked a block over to Stan and Wendy’s house so they wouldn’t wander into the street.

Wendy skateboarded down the driveway, drinking a Capri Sun.

“What the fuck?” she pointed at Cartman. “Did they pre-bake?”

“Yep.”

“Assholes.”

“I know.”

She flipped her board up, looked closer at my face. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve been crying.”

I bit my lip. I was hoping she would think I was high too.

“I saw Bebe today.”

“Oh. What did she say?” She opened the screen door for us and I pushed Cartman and Kenny inside.

“She wants to not see each other for a while.”

“Ah.”

Wendy and I stepped on the landing of their kitchen. Kelso, the orange cat, trotted up to me, demanding to be picked up. I had been his favorite since he was a kitten. Probably because we’re both orange.

Stan was at the kitchen sink finishing some dishes. He stopped to fist bump me. 

“Hey man, how was the last day of work?”

“Eh, you know. Slow,” I shifted Kelso to my other arm. “Mostly spent it training someone else.”

Wendy moved out from behind me and made her way to the family room to open some windows for ventilation. Cartman and Kenny were playing with Jackie, the black cat, on the floor. 

“Kyle and Bebe broke up,” she announced.

“Called it,” said Stan. 

“No, no, no. She said she just wants a break.”

“That’s fucking bullshit,” he was drying his hands on a towel now. Donna, the gray one, waltzed in between his ankles. “You may as well have broken up. I’m sorry dude, but if she really can’t handle you for who you are now, she never will. You’re wasting your time.”

“I guess.”

“Do you ever see yourself marrying this chick?”

“Stan, really?” Wendy called over, “He just got here. Can you let him breathe for a sec before you start burrowing in on him?”

“It’s okay,” I said.

Stan opened the fridge and pulled out a grape soda for me, careful not to close on the door on Hyde’s scraggly paw. His favorite spot was on top of the fridge, looking down on us peasants. 

I sucked the fizzle from the can while Kelso swatted, and said, “I mean, I’ve thought about it. We’ve been together for almost four years now.”

“Exactly. But realistically, can you see it happening? Waking up to her every morning? Going home to her every night?”

Everyone was staring at me now. Even Eric and Fez lounging in the cat condo. I said nothing. That was probably an answer enough for Stan already.

When Bebe and I first got together, I just appreciated our time doing fun couple things together, not thinking of any endgame. Last year, I did think about proposing, since it seemed our relationship was thinning down to wire and I believed no one better would ever want me anyway. 

I wanted the attention off me. “What about you?”

“What?”

“When did you know you wanted to marry Wendy?”

He spared a long, sweet look in her direction. “The first time she sucked the life out of me.” 

“You make me sick, Stan. Just get me high already.”

* * *

7:45 am.

Monday.

I stood outside room 334, staring at the wall art. A large, watercolor painting featuring a landscape of beakers and flasks filled with rainbow liquid reeled me in.

“Gay chemistry?” I whispered to myself. Of course, not all rainbows are intended to represent, but I can’t help getting excited when I see one.

Summer is a strange time on campus. There are still some classes, but mostly everyone is gone - the food court is closed, the benches and bathrooms are empty, hallway lights flip off when someone hasn’t walked by in ten minutes. Everything is quiet. The buildings feel forbidden as if you’re disturbing the ghosts of students past as soon as you step in from the hissing sun and into that first glass vestibule.

I must have looked like a statue, standing so still, staring at the wall in the golden rays of the early morning sun. 

Dr. Vince came down the hall, lugging a bag and a laptop case, lab coat billowing out behind her. I realized we were dressed the same: tennis shoes, khakis, and purple button-down tops.

“Kyle!”

“Hi, good morning!” I reached out to shake her hand, but she hugged me instead, which felt awkward because she’s so short.

“This is for you,” she handed me a lab coat. “Make sure you wash it at least once a week.”

After she unlocked the door and settled her belongings, she showed me where all supplies were, where to clock in and out. I looked around the place, breathing deeply, finally feeling like I belonged somewhere.

She was pulling out paperwork from her bag when  _ he _ walked in.

It was like when a saloon back in the wild, wild west, suddenly goes quiet as the suspicious character comes in - the air is still, you can only hear a floor creak, and everyone is nervous.

He stared me down, hands in his pockets.

“Hi, Craig! This is Kyle. He’s going to be helping us this summer.”

I smiled a bit defensively at him. Craig did not smile back.

“Hello.” I walked around the table and held out my hand. It hung out for a moment before he took it with a cool hand, shook it once, then pushed it away. His eyes went to my scar, but I’m used to that. It always happens when I meet new people. But he really kept searching my face, so I said, “I’m really excited to work with you, Craig.”

His eyes went wide for a moment, hearing his own name come out of my mouth, then went back to their half-lidded state. Then that look: concerned, looking down at me. I turned away.

Dr. Vince is excellent at reading a room. “Kyle is very smart. Very smart and very capable. He was my first choice.”

Only one word from Craig, monotone yet nasally, pregnant with disdain: “Great…”

It was a long fucking first day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *“Trash Boy” definition according to the Urban Dictionary.


	3. aconite (hatred, be cautious)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy! I made a playlist for this fic:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40ZUxgQe8V86vWCemUC7Pc?si=K9qk3XYrTDKnbs9vaMavKA
> 
> I may add/rearrange songs as time goes on, just FYI

The whole day was spent trying to prove myself. I was 25 going on 26 and believed I owed no one an explanation for my existence, but I was meant to help Craig with his Master’s project (which he oh so lovingly brought up at least twice before lunch and once after), in some form, so I needed to provide reassurance. According to Bebe, I’m not very good at it. 

But I wanted to show I belonged there. It bothered me that Craig was so cautious of Dr. Vince’s judgment that I silently accused him of being misogynistic, but decided after a few hours of working with him, that the accusation was unfair, and he was wholeheartedly just a general prick.

I avoided speaking to him directly, relaying my findings to Dr. Vince, even if Craig was standing right next to me. When I spoke, out of the corner of my eye I could see him stop what he was doing and listen. Figuring he was letting his guard down, understanding that I was a peer who deserved respect, I turned to him - maybe he would finally smile back, or his eyes might turn softer and he’d piggyback onto my words and I could be relieved from further private criticisms.

I looked.

His expression still read cold.

Cold enough to stir up a snowstorm in the dead of summer.  _ Careful, Kyle. Don’t fall through the ice. _

The look pierced me, and perhaps I shouldn’t have looked back, but we have to look at everything even if it kills us. We have to look. We have to know. What is even the real etiquette of looking?

I turned not only my body away, but anything else within me that could register his presence. Even when Dr. Vince left around 4:30 to pick up her daughter from daycare, and we had a half-hour to ourselves, we didn’t speak. 30 minutes ticked on forever, and I daydreamed of already being at home, tucked away somewhere else. I pretended my body wasn’t there.

When 5 finally came, he let me out first, then locked the door behind us. He adjusted his backpack straps, then took a step in the direction I came that morning. I began to walk back the other way, to the stairs, so we wouldn’t ride the elevator together. 

“See ya,” he said.

“Yep, see ya,” I said, unintentionally mimicking his tone, then added, with a bit of a sting: “It was nice meeting you.”

He stopped. “Are you not coming back?”

“What? Of course I am.”

“Then why did you say that?”

“Because I met you today?”

“Sounds weird. Maybe save that for when summer is over.”

“Will do.”

He stepped into the elevator, and I waited, went to the window, watched him leave the building, walk by a fountain, through the trees, and into the parking lot, texting the whole time. Then I went down. 

* * *

“So, how was your big boy job - oh, going straight for the fridge. Oh, straight for the _alcohol_. Jesus, Kahl.”

I chugged in the middle of the kitchen while Cartman sat at our plastic dining table. Kenny had already left for his night shift. When the can was empty, I wiped my lip with my arm and dove into the fridge for another.

“Looks like it went well…”

“I think I should quit.”

Cartman looked up from his phone scrolling to watch me lean, exasperated against the counter, rubbing my eyes.

“Why? Was it really that bad?”

“I like the job a lot, it’s just… the grad assistant. He’s totally stuck up and it stresses me out. He doesn’t think I’m smart enough to be there.”

“He said that to you?”

“Well, no. But it was insinuated from the way he talked to me. The way he looked at me.”

“What’s his name?”

“Craig.”

“Makes sense. People named Craig are usually assholes.

Somehow this made me feel better.  _ Of course, Craig isn’t an asshole by choice _ , I mused,  _ it’s the role he must abide for his namesake. _

“Maybe, though,” Cartman continued. “Maybe he’s shy.”

I almost spit out my 8-Bit Pale Ale. “Shy?! How?”

“Well he’s probably just a socially awkward nerd, all holed up in that lab all the time. Or he’s anxious. Like you.”

“Doubt.”

“Sometimes when you’re really anxious, you get a bit snappy. Maybe he’s too used to working alone.”

“I guess. Who knows.”

“It’s just a thought. But seriously, don’t quit because of him. I’ll come kick him the nuts if you need me to.”

“I’ll do my own nut-kicking, thanks.”

He went back to scrolling, and I retreated to my room to change into my outside clothes. I spent the rest of the evening drinking, shoveling, tearing, and planting as the pink sky stretched into purple and orange and blue. 


	4. purple hyacinth (i am sorry, please forgive me)

I woke up at 3 am, screaming.

_ Clyde, stop! Don’t! _

The nightmare came back, and I felt it all over again. Face: shattered. Windshield: shattered. Clyde…

Cartman rushed in, flipped on the lights, and sat on my bed. I was sitting up, heaving. My throat burned so much. He held onto my wrists.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay. You’re home, Kyle. It was ten years ago, okay? You’re not in that car anymore. You’re home and you’re safe.”

I ripped away from him and grabbed my garbage can so I could vomit.

Kenny, still smelling of syrup and sweat, was at my side with a glass of water when I was done.

After drinking and back to breathing evenly, Cartman asked: “Do you want to sit outside for a while?”

I nodded. He put his arm under mine and lifted me out of bed. Kenny opened the door for us when we reached downstairs. He always stayed silent during my episodes. I think I was scary to him.

We stepped out into blackness. It was a sweet, summer mugginess drenched with the sound of cicadas. A few light raindrops trickled on the top of our heads. We sat down on the swinging bench by my garden until my personality came back. 

Cartman eventually went back to bed. I stayed outside for a few hours.

When I went back inside to get ready for work, either Kenny or Cartman (or both) had taken away my bag of vomit and changed out my sweaty sheets. I might be a bad roommate. 

* * *

Trauma is such a dangerous, formless thing, and it’s different for everyone. I’ve been told that I’m very lucky, despite the horrors I’ve seen, but there are times where it gets so bad that I wish I was dead and done with it all.

We kept a fish tank in my room when I was growing up, and inside it was always two: an iridescent shark and a catfish - Fred and Catatafish, respectively. 

Fred was always out and swimming around. Catatafish stayed inside a hollowed log and almost never came out except to eat. So many times we were concerned he died, but coming around to the side of the tank, we could see his eyes moving, his gills expanding. My episodes are like watching him. It hides for several weeks, sometimes months, and I start to think that maybe I’m better, or even cured, then something coos it out, whether it be stress, a certain sound, a certain smell, and I’m dead in the water, faces all around me checking to see if my eyes are still moving, my chest still rising and falling.

* * *

I must have looked like absolute shit when I walked in that morning (felt like it too) because Dr. Vince noticed right away. 

“Oh no, are you sick?”

“Nah, just didn’t sleep well,” I answered, holding up a latte from South Perk (Tweek jammed in so many questions while he made it). “Hence the coffee.”

“I feel you.”

Right after we let ourselves in, Craig walked in, also looking sleepless and shitty. Which made me feel great. He passed in front of the sink, looked me over. I prepared myself for whatever snarky thing he might say:  _ “Too much partying last night?” _

But no.

“Are you okay?”

Okay? OK. OK, sure.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep well.”

“Oh. Me neither,” he said, then moved on.

After that, he started asking me questions. Nothing chummy, strictly work-related. I thought he was easing up on me with his scattered “Hey, I would use another pair of eyes on this water sample,” “Do you think I should mess with the variable in this solution?” “Does the viscosity of this oil seem a little off to you?”

When I spoke, he kept that cold stare, but it was losing its effect on me. I’ve been through worse.

Our lunch schedule was up to us. We could go whenever we chose, as long as we came back in an hour. At 1, he yawned, then went and leaned against the door frame where a small adjoining office with a singular desk was. Dr. Vince was there doing data entry all morning.

“I think I’m going to get a coffee with my lunch. Do you want me to bring you back anything?”

“Ooh, strawberry chai,” she chirped.

“Now  _ that’s _ the gay agenda,” Craig said. They both laughed.

I was jealous. And shocked. Here they had this special bond I was outside of, a bond so comfortable that they could speak in such a way that would either out them or make them sound bigoted. I knew Dr. Vince had a wife, so it had to be teasing. But Craig? Did he just out himself in a sideswipe manner to see if I was listening? Or was he so cozy with his sexuality that he could casually brandish it like a small pocket knife?  _ He’s older. He’s had more time to think about it. _

I suddenly became insecure, wishing I could know myself like how he seemingly knew himself. I was formless. 

Then his voice turned low, almost a whisper. All I heard were his murmurs and then Dr. Vince say “I don’t know. Ask him.”

It had to be me they were talking about. I leaned into a microscope, digging my knee into the cabinet. 

Like an apparition, he floated in front of me.

“You seem like you could use another coffee. Want to come with?”

Oh, fuck.

“To where?”

“There’s a Starbucks across the street we could walk to.”

My first instinct was to say no, but I realized I left my lunchbox at home, and there was never an occasion where I would turn down an opportunity for a bagel and cream cheese.

“That would be swell.”

_ Why the fuck did I just say that? Is it 1955? _

A small smile, just the corner of his lip, barely baring a tooth. “Well golly gee, let’s go then.”

* * *

Even the traffic was lenient as we jaywalked across the two one-way streets. The shadow of the overtly large American flag loomed over us at half-mast in the mid-afternoon sun. I wondered who died that day.

He ordered a mocha first, then the strawberry chai to pick up for later. I stood aways away in line, quietly stealing ideas for my store until he gestured for me to come stand by him at the register.

“What do you want? It’s on me.”

“No.”

“I insist.”

“You sure?”

“Yes!”

“Okay…” I looked at the cashier. “Double espresso, please.” There was no way I’d order food now. The thought of eating in front of him made me uncomfortable too.

“Wow, cheap date,” he said.

My cheeks burned so I politely laughed and pretended to focus on a ceiling light.

“Thanks, Craig,” I said when we reached the end of the bar.

Again, that split-second of eyes wide open when I said his name.

“No problem. I owe you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel bad about yesterday.”

Ah, yes. Consolation Coffee. Whatever, I liked the gesture. Coffee is one of my love languages. 

The barista set down our cups and we crossed to one of the tall dark tables directly in sunlight.

“I do too,” I said, though none of it was really my fault.

“I was very cold to you, and it wasn’t warranted. I’m sorry.”

Now that I saw him more closely in the sunlight, I noticed that Craig was kind of pretty. I’ve never met someone who had such light gray eyes and such dark black hair. When he spoke, I could see a hint of the gap between his two front teeth. It suited him. But I wasn’t about to say  _ “Hey, man to man, I think you’re kind of pretty.” _

“It’s alright.”

“Thank you. I was just thrown off a bit.”

So, Cartman was right. Craig had been nervous. But I wanted to dig deeper.

“Thrown off?”

“Yeah. I doubt you remember, but we’ve actually met before.”

“What? Really?”

“It wasn’t official, I guess. More like, I’ve  _ seen you _ .”

It was a small department, but I had never seen him before in my life. How could he have noticed me? “...seen me how? When?” 

“It was about a year ago.”

“You remember seeing me that long ago?”

“You made quite an impression.”

“I don’t understand…”

He popped the lid off his mocha first, sipped up the whipped cream. “I saw you at the vending machines way after classes ended - and I’m pretty sure it was a Friday night too - you were standing in front of one, saw me standing close by. You turned to me and said,  _ dude, this one has king size Kit-Kat bars _ .”

I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. “There’s no way that was me. It had to be someone else.”

“Don’t think so.” He pointed at my tattoos.

How much of me was he looking at? “Fair. Go on.”

“I just nodded at you, and when you put the money in, you said  _ come to daddy _ .”

“Oh… oh my fuck.”

“And I was like,  _ okay, this guy is high as fuck. _ And I left you to do whatever you were going to do to that Kit-Kat bar.”

“I’m really sorry you had to see me like that. I, uh, keep it at home now.”

“That’s good. But you can imagine that when I saw you yesterday, I got scared you’d smoke up everything in the greenhouse.”

Our university has a little student-run greenhouse next to the Arts and Sciences building. I’ve made this joke myself when I volunteered for a few shifts.

“I’ve worked in there before. It’s pretty fun.” I drank my espresso. So comfortably bitter.

“That’s really cool.”

“Thanks.”

“Anyway, Dr. Vince is right, you’re totally capable. I’m sorry I misjudged you.”

“I appreciate you saying that. Apology accepted.”

A small, corner smile again. “To be honest, the reason I couldn’t get to sleep is that I felt so bad about how I acted. It really seemed to bother you.”

“Oh… I didn’t think you would notice.”

“I noticed.” He reached out and shook my hand, warmer this time. “So, I’d like to say now that I’m excited to work with you too, Kyle.”

I hoped he couldn’t feel my heart through my palm when he said my name.

He then asked a barista to make that strawberry chai, and we left. He ate lunch somewhere else in the building, and I ate vending machine Fritos on the basement stairs.

* * *

After lunch, it began to storm.

I love storms. It’s a generic thing to claim, I’ve been told (“oh, you like getting caught in the rain, Kahl? Do you also like  piña coladas and making love at midnight?”)

You would think that someone with my levels of anxiety might be terrified of thunder, but I find it exciting. When I was a kid, I fostered a phase of being obsessed with the movie  _ Twister _ and being fascinated by tornados, tsunamis, typhoons… I loved how frightening yet how beautiful they could be. Who knows, maybe I’ll change career paths and be a storm chaser one day. It could be fatal, but it would be a badass way to go.

I was a bit of a storm chaser for Craig. Him being the eye, the center surrounded by damage and chaos, but never letting it touch his own tranquil space, and me watching from afar, worried if I got too close, I would be sucked in and pieces of me would scatter all over Colorado.

After Dr. Vince left, the lightning and thunder dwindled away but continued to rain steady and hard. By 5:05, we were standing in the foyer, looking out, watching a couple of people run, holding a jacket over their heads.

“Damn, that’s pretty gnarly,” Craig observed. “How far away did you park?”

“Oh, I live close, so I walked here.”

I could feel him watching the side of my face. 

“It doesn’t seem like it’ll let up for a while,” he said.

“Not really.”

“You’re not going to try and walk home in this, are you?”

“Nah, I can get an Uber or something.”

“Oh, stop.”

“Stop what?”

“I live close too. I don’t mind taking you home.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay… you’ve already been so kind to me today. I couldn’t do that to you.”

Craig laughed. Not cruel, but genuinely gushing with warmth. “You’re not doing anything to me. Really, I can take you.”

“It’s okay.”

“You could get sick.”

“I’m indestructible.”

“Let me rephrase this: Kyle, I  _ want _ to drive you home, okay?”

“I…”

“Come on,” he opened the door and ran out, the smell of fresh rain rushed in, and I ran after him to the parking lot, to a compact black car. When I got inside, I was glad he wanted to take me home. The rain was so heavy I could hardly see where I was running.

His hair was soaked, sticking to the sides of his face, his white dress shirt clung to his chest.  _ Fuck, I need to stop looking. Fuck, fuck, fuck… _ I pointed my knees toward the door, rested my elbow on the door, leaning away as far as I could.

“I’m a bit directionally challenged, just to warn you,” he turned on the ignition, heat, and wipers and drove us off-campus.

“It’s just up the street and to the left here,” I said when we stopped at a corner light.

“‘Aight.”

Thunder came back. Then a cut of purple lightning in the distance.

“So do you leave your car at home a lot?”

“I don’t have a car. I don’t drive.”

“Oh?”

I knew this lift would lead to this conversation. Never fails. “I got into a bad accident when I was 16. Haven’t driven since.”

“Oh.”

I felt what he was thinking.  _ So that’s why his face is like that. _ All the pieces come together. More like all the scars come together.

“Well, I’m glad you’re still around,” he said as we made that left turn.

“Thank you. I guess I am too - oh, it’s right here. Marsh Tattoo.”

“You live in a tattoo parlor?”

“Yeah, my roomies and I have an apartment upstairs. They’re artists.”

“Is that who did all your tattoos?”

“Pretty much.”

“That’s so dope.”

He slowed down into a stop in front of the place.

“Thank you so much.” I reached for the door handle.

“It’s no problem. Thanks for today.”

“You’re welcome?” I didn’t understand his thankfulness. It seemed like he did all of the emotional leg work today.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

  
  



	5. columbine (foolishness)

After my PTSD episodes, the DARK THOUGHTS come.

I was told that I am not always my thoughts, they are just thoughts that I have.

How are we not our thoughts? I argued. We are embedded in every internal monologue, every negotiation, every opinion that floats to the top of our heads. We are of our thoughts and our thoughts are of us. We’re always thinking of ourselves, anyway.

The other day I walked along a bridge. A mother and daughter leaned over the railing, peering down at the floating ducks who have just returned in time for spring. The little girl’s bike was parked a few feet from her. A sick part of me imagined taking the bike and hurtling it over the rails and into the green water below. I didn’t do this of course. I still felt bad. A wise, licensed professional would tell me these intrusive thoughts are normal, to let them come and go, but it still bothers me that I am attached to this ugly thought, the wickedness that has settled and becomes the grime of my heart.

The DARK THOUGHTS are a fresh reminder of sinewy truth: I don’t deserve to be alive. I should have been more responsible. It was all my fault.

The fallout is worse than the bomb.

When the DARK THOUGHTS surface, I stay in my room and don’t speak to anyone. It only takes an hour for someone to notice and knock on my door (it’s usually open). From there I’ll find myself in a plush chair in the office of a university therapist who tells me I need to let myself feel out my emotions no matter how emasculating it seems and then refer me to a center downtown that I can’t afford so they can stick octopus-like wires to my head and conduct “behavioral therapy,” then I shell out $12.00 for the session (yay student discount), go home and wait to feel better.

It’s a terrifying circle of events. Rather than appreciate good times, I become fearful, knowing my past will parallel with, then crash into my present.

So even after spending that lovely day with Craig, the hours after he dropped me off were difficult.

I couldn’t bother anyone: Cartman was tattooing. Stan was also tattooing, but the way it sounded coming from his cubicle made it sound like he was fucking the client. We don’t get moaners very often, but Stan told me later that this woman wailed every time he so much as pulled a tiny scale line in the tail of her mermaid. I would understand if the mermaid were somewhere sensitive, but it was her upper arm. The pain-pleasure scale is really glitched for some people. I wanted to call Wendy, but she was in the middle of a 12-hour shift and I didn’t want to bother her with my DARK THOUGHTS, though her pragmatic perspective would have helped. 

Kenny was at the front showing someone body jewelry when I walked in, shivering in the air conditioning with my damp hair and clothes. 

“Hey, dude, I was just about to call you,” he said. The woman he was helping politely smiled up at me then continued looking into the glass counter.

“It’s cool. Craig drove me here.”

“Who?”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t tell you. Craig is my asshole co-worker.”

“An asshole that drove you home, apparently.”

“Kenny, you ignorant slut.”

The woman pretended not to be hearing our banter, but she laughed. He went back to help her and I went to go be depressed in my room.

My room is not a bad place to be depressed in, though. There is a small desk facing the window, and a chair with no back so I can kick it under the desk when I’m done. There’s a T.V. on the wall, and my bed is a queen size. The walls are lined with wooden shelves of books, notebooks, old textbooks, rocks I’ve collected from different lakes or parks (in individual jars labeled GRAND LAKE, BOW MAR, GARDEN OF THE GODS, RED ROCK CANYON, etc.), shark teeth, and bird bones. It’s a strange set-up, I know. Especially with the bones. It reminds me of a natural history museum I went to several years ago with my little brother. There was a bright room with bodies of moths, butterflies, beetles, frogs, fish - all preserved and pinned into clear boxes for us to see. Drawers of yellowing, clattering bones, and pelts of zebra, giraffe, tiger, elephant - for us to touch. If I was offered to sleep one night in that room, I’d be afraid, in the middle of the night, of a sudden fluttering wing or a prairie dog digging its claws into my eyes. 

However, we live above a shop filled with taxidermied animals and they have yet to magically awaken and kill us, so maybe we’re okay. 

I went to my closet and changed into dry clothes. I’ve never been into anything besides plain shirts, sometimes band shirts and jeans, because I figure my skin is already a fashion statement and I don’t need any more people staring at me than usual. 

Black lake stones and shells line my window sill, and I was careful where I placed my hands to open the window. Muggy air filled my room as I watched raindrops slide off tree leaves and roof slats. The buzzing of needles and echoes of the wailing woman rose through the floor. I groaned. Needles I can tolerate because they’ve been the background noise of my life for years, but the moans bothered me. They reminded me of Bebe.

I thought to reply to her Monday text: “How was the first day?”

I didn’t say anything that first night because I was too angry and didn’t want to accidentally take it out on her. Now, I was too enveloped by DARK THOUGHTS and couldn’t bear the thought of reaching out to her for comfort. Being vulnerable with her in the past never led to anything good.

I opted to lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, listen to the rain, twiddle a bird bone in my fingers, and think. 

He was like a light switch in between the two days I’d known him. What a strange thing, to be in the fulcrum. The reasoning, I guessed, was understandable. I don’t know how I would have reacted if our roles were switched and he was the one high as a kite at the vending machines, then plopped into an extremely expensive lab to help me. I would have been cautious, but I couldn’t picture myself being so damn cold.

The next day, complete 180. Like we were old lovers.  _ Oh, stop _ . Like he looked and saw every insecurity nestled in my eyes.  _ Oh, stop. _

I didn’t have the balls to ask about his “gay agenda” comment. I wanted to, badly. But when it comes down to it, no matter how curious I was, it wasn’t any of my business. If he wanted to bring it up, that was his prerogative. I was curious if he had a boyfriend, though.

I turned over and placed the bird bone on my desk. I wanted to sleep, but I just couldn’t keep my eyes closed. Every time I shut them and entered blackness, my heart sped up, the back of my head throbbed, I clenched my jaw, and the screaming woman synchronized with the ambulance sirens in my head. So I kept them open, laying on my side, staring blankly like a gutted fish. 

Silence, some laughter, talking, doorbell chiming, then the door closing shut.

Two minutes later, Stan knocked on my door.

“Come in.”

He opened the door, face red, dabbing sweat from his forehead with a paper towel like a priest leaving a confession booth with x-rated tales.

“Damn,” I rolled back and propped myself on my elbows, “Sounds like you had a juicy time in there. I feel like I should tell Wendy.”

“Oh god, don’t. You know how jealous she gets.”

“Yeah…” 

He patted his upper lip. “Hey, uh, Cartman told me you had a pretty rough start this morning. You feeling better?”

I nodded.

“You’re sure?”

I nodded again.

“Not sure that I believe you… but you know we’re here for you. Don’t put up a wall, okay?”

“I know. Thank you.”

“Hear anything from Bebe?”

“She asked about work. I haven’t said anything yet.”

“Hm,” he leaned into the door frame. “Kenny’s ordering pizza. Want to come down?”

“You’re just asking that so I can’t be alone to cry.”

“You can cry in front of us. Then you can wipe your tears with pizza.”

* * *

Another side effect of DARK THOUGHTS is a constant need to have music or a podcast,  _ something _ to distract so I don’t succumb to the infinite inward thinking, full of life-ending propaganda.

On Wednesday morning, I dug in my closet for a small FM radio shaped like a ladybug (I have no idea how I got it or where it came from). I blew the dust off, tucked it under my arm, and left for the day.

Even with melatonin washed down with grape soda, I didn’t sleep well. I hoped that walking under the early morning sun and at least 16 ounces of coffee would wake me up.

When I got there, laptop bag slung over my shoulder, hot coffee (which I forgot to get a stopper for, and now drips of coffee were spilling on my shaking, iron-deficient hand), I saw Craig sitting on a beach outside the building, reading something on his phone. He glanced up, the way a stranger would glance at another stranger passing by, but when he saw it was me, he smiled. Not full teeth - I could already feel he was self-conscious about that.

“You’re early,” he said.

“So are you. Can I sit?”

“Sure.”

I sat by him, making sure I slipped the bag between us. “Thanks again for the ride home yesterday.”

“Don’t mention it. I owed you.”

I popped the lid off my coffee and blew a little.

“Do you want some?” I found myself asking. I never shared my drinks with people. The idea of backwash made me anxious. Then again, everything makes me anxious, so what’s one more thing?

“Is that straight black coffee?”

“Yep.”

“No, thanks. I’ve got too much of a sweet tooth. I don’t think I could handle it.”

“I kind of want to see you try it now. Just to see your face.”

“Not happening today, friend.”

Friend?  _ Friend? _ I hardly considered us friends, but okay.

“Another time, then.”

“Yeah, on the 31st of Neveruary.”

I laughed then sipped. “How come you’re so early?”

“Eh, I just woke up early. Then left early, because the longer I looked at how badly my roommate fucked up our kitchen, the madder I got. So I left, got chicken and waffles, now here I am.”

I wanted to ask about the roommate, but he seemed guarded about it, so I left it alone. “Oh my god, chicken and waffles are me and my friend’s favorite thing to get.”

“So fucking good.”

“Right?!”

“I just wish I could get it as Waffle House. The closest one is almost two hours away. I had to get it at iHop.”

“iHop isn’t so bad,” I said, imagining Kenny next to me as if I were defending his honor. 

“Yeah, but Waffle House is sentimental to me, you know? My mom and I used to go at like two in the morning. She’d get coffee, I’d get blueberry waffles. We’d shoot the shit with the waitstaff. It was warm and the counters were always greasy, but-” he stopped suddenly, looked at me. “Sorry, I’m rambling. About waffles, of all things.”

“Sounds like it was more than just about the waffles.”

He leaned down, thighs on his elbows, hands on his cheeks. “Yeah.”

“I’ve never been to Waffle House.”

“No? You totally should.”

“Maybe we could go on a field trip sometime. We’d be like Harold and Kumar. But, you know, instead of White Castle it would be Waffle House.”

“That would be cool.”

There was a sudden dryness of his “that would be cool” that bothered me. But I guess it  _ was _ a weird thing for me to suggest, even if it was a joke.

“iHop is okay,” he said. “I think the waiters are cracked out sometimes, though.”

I tried not to bust. “Oh? What do they do?”

“Well, there’s this one guy in particular…”

Oh boy, here it comes.

“I was with a friend and when he was taking our order, he kept going “MMMM” after every item like he could taste it in his mouth as we said it. It was super uncomfortable. I thought he was trying to gussy up our order, like try and convince us it’s good, but it’s like… we’re already there. In the booth. Why bother?”

I almost died. “Did he have blonde hair, kind of short but lanky?”

“I think so?”

“It was probably my son.”

Craig jerked sideways, looked me up and down. “Your son?! How old are you?”

“Sorry, sorry,” I said in between laughs. “Not really my son. But he’s kind of like a little brother, kind of a son to me. I’m 25.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have thought.”

“He’s one of the artists I live with. That’s just his second job.”

“Okay. Makes sense now… you’re 25?”

“Well, I’ll be 26 in a couple weeks.”

“Really? What day?”

I didn’t really want to say. I get weird about my birthday. Well. More like depressed. But I was already knee-deep in this.

“The 26th.”

“You’ll be 26 on the 26th? Love that for you.”

“Yay for getting old.”

“26 isn’t old. How old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know. Everyone in their 20s looks the same to me.”

“What if I’m in my 30s?”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Then how old are you?”

“Guess.”

“Well, I thought you were older, but you’ve got me questioning everything now. You’re a Master’s student, so you have to be at least 22 or 23. Maybe 21.”

“You think I’m that young? Wow. I’m 28. This is my second year of my second Master’s.”

The jealousy again. Mixed with awe. It’s a hell of a long time to spend in school, but I wanted it. God, I wanted that life.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m 2 and still don’t have my Bachelor’s-” I started.

He waved me off. “It doesn’t matter how long it takes. All that matters is you finish.”

“A bit easy for the guy with two Master’s to say.”

“Oh, stop. I still have to pay all of that off eventually.”

I learned throughout the summer that “oh, stop” and “oh, horsefeathers,” were just a part of Craig’s rotating vernacular, especially when it came to me. Anytime I teased or became testy, it was his endearing way of shutting me up. Sometimes he’d just kiss me. 

* * *

Before work started, I asked Dr. Vince if I could talk to her in the hallway alone. Time to warn her about the fallout.

I caught a glimpse of Craig’s face, suspicious, as I closed the door.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I just need to talk about a couple of things real quick.”

“Did Craig do something? I told him to be nicer to you.”

Oh. 

The floor tilted. My shoulders sank. It was all fake. He was forced to be nice to me. Boss’s orders.

_ Man up, Kyle. Come on. _

Who better than Dr. Vince to understand that my brain chemicals rise and fall as heavy as the pistons in Big Ben? I told her everything. PTSD. I’m a bit whacko. Insane in the membrane. I might cry randomly. I might get snippy, or snappy, or whatever the hell Cartman said. But I’m trying, I’m trying my best and can I please have a radio? I promise to keep it low. 

  
  



	6. periwinkle (nostalgia)

I want to say, before anything else, that I wasn’t mad at Craig. Maybe you would be, in my shoes. No one likes dealing with fake people. I’d rather him just be honest and hate me rather than whatever bullshit lion-tamer show he put on for me. Anger has never put me anywhere good.

There is “good” anger. Or righteous anger. Productive anger. The ones that are angry for homeless LGBT youth and veterans, families being torn apart by borders, all the sexual assault not being taken seriously - these are things I will always be productively or righteously angry about. 

But anger, my own personal anger, has never helped me.

When I first entered juvie, I was a giant ball of flaming anger. If I wasn’t vegged out on pain medication, I was seething. I was so mad at the world. Mad at my parents. Mad at Clyde and his father. Horrified, furious at myself.

A worker approached me after breakfast and told me it was time for counseling. I said no. They said it was mandatory. I shoved them. Guards came. Cartman tried to say: “Hey, it’s chill, he won’t do it again.” I would have done it again. They took me, kicking and screaming, in a small room with no windows and soft piano music. All of them said they understood me, understood my pain. Understood my anger.

_ Like hell you do. _

* * *

Now I tend to skip anger and head straight for sadness. 

For those last three days in the week, I harbored a small portion of sadness to myself, like a barnacle on the large ship called S.S. DARK THOUGHTS.

Craig continued his niceties. I responded with caution. Every word that fell from his mouth that wasn’t work-related became fraudulent. 

I kept the ladybug radio low, kept my tongue in my mouth.

Friday came, and I was exhausted, yet felt like I didn’t get anything done that week. Oh well, the first week, expectations are usually low. In the morning, the air conditioning unit hummed along as it grew to 85-90 degrees outside. By noon, it clunked out. We popped open the windows and let the little breeze we had whistle through the screens. If the air wasn’t back on within a half-hour, Dr. Vince said we were leaving because she didn’t want us all to work inside a brazen bull.

“You ever fry an egg on the sidewalk?” Craig asked me as I was splashing cold water on the back of my neck for the 1,000th time. The sunburn got worse and I forgot to bring that damn aloe gel.

“What?”

“You know, when it’s hot out like this, you put an egg on some foil and fry it on the concrete.”

“Sounds like it would take a long time.”

“It would be cool to see though.”

“You haven’t tried it?”

“No, but I saw it in a Mickey Mouse science book when I was a kid. I’ve always wanted to try it.”

I shook my head, picturing child Craig, indoctrinated by the Mouse into the intricacies of thermodynamics.

“You could fry an egg on the back of my neck right now, it’s so scorched.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty fucking red, dude.” He reached out and touched the base of my neck with one finger, over my shirt. He might have felt me stiffen because he drew back right away. The last time someone touched my face or neck was Bebe that past Sunday, and I wasn’t expecting him to touch me there. If I wasn’t so awkward, I could have saved the moment by asking if he was about to check my spine for scoliosis. Suave isn’t my thing. He seemed embarrassed too, and I understood. It’s not like I haven’t been the one to reach out and touch when I shouldn’t have. Dr. Vince was on the other side of the lab, phone tucked between her ear and shoulder. Had she seen?

“Hopefully you don’t get too many blisters,” he said quickly, then walked to one of the windows, fanning himself.

“Hopefully.”

“I’ve had pretty nasty sun poisoning before. There was a blister so big on my chest that when my mom popped it, I fainted.”

“Oh god, don’t tell me that.”

“The blister was actually kind of shaped like a conch shell. Perfect for a day at the beach.”

“Please stop talking.”

He smirked at me. Did he  _ like _ making me squeamish?  _ I’ve only known you for five days, buddy. Calm down. _

I finally decided to text Bebe back. She probably hated me now for not saying anything for several days, but I don’t believe in ghosting.

“Hey, sorry it took me forever to respond. It’s been weird and chaotic and I didn’t want to bum you out. The AC went out so we might leave early.”

Then, almost two minutes later:

“It’s okay, Ky. Do you want to meet up?”

Dr. Vince hung up the phone. “Okay, the maintenance people either really can’t fix it or they don’t want to. Let’s just go home.”

I went to the wall clock to punch out while they packed up their stuff. After I slid my ID and watched my name flash up with the time, there were sudden, panicked footsteps. Craig backed up against the lab safety posters.

A bee zipped around the three of us. It must have flown in through a tear in the screen.

“Aw, it’s just a little guy,” said Dr. Vince.

“I’m allergic!” Craig teleported to a different corner of the room every time the bee neared him.

“I’ll get it.” I grabbed two measuring cups, waited until it landed on a surface, trapped it with one cup then quickly enclosed it with the other. I’ve never been full-on stung before, but I’ve felt how sharp the stingers are and wasn’t happy to be doing this, but it was better than letting Craig run around like a chicken without a head. He could have just left the room.

Dr. Vince shut down closed all the windows and shut off the lights. My shirt stuck to my back. And if you have balls, you know how uncomfortable I felt with certain parts sticking to other parts. 

“Can you take my bag, please?” I asked Craig. “I kind of have my hands full here.”

“Sure.” He slung it over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off my new pollen companion.

Dr. Vince rolled her eyes. “I think the bee just wanted you because you’re so sweet, Craig.”

* * *

The elevator ride was easily in my top five elevator rides list. Craig took the stairs. Dr. Vince and I rode together, watching it fly around then give up, sitting at the glass bottom. When we got outside, I let the little bastard go, and said goodbye to Dr. Vince, who told me I could stop calling her Professor/Doctor and just call her Susan. 

I texted Bebe back:

“Sure. We just left. Please for the love of god take me somewhere with air conditioning.”

Bebe: “Omw.”

Craig popped open the door. “Did you get rid of it?”

I held up the empty cups. “You’re in the clear.”

He came out, handed me my bag, which I shoved the cups into. 

“Thanks, Craig. You’re the bee’s knees.”

“Haha.”

I leaned against the shady brick wall, careful not to let it rub my neck.

“Have anything going on this weekend?” he asked.

“Not really.” I shrugged. “Something might come up. I don’t know. I haven’t had a weekend off in a long time.”

“Really? Where did you work before this?”

“Coffee shop.” I prayed he wouldn’t ask which one.

“Not surprising.”

“I guess not. What about you?”

“Mailman.”

“Oh, I meant… what are your plans for the weekend, sorry.”

“Oh! I have a graduation party to go to.”

“That’s nice.”

“It’s crazy how fast that shit goes. Doesn’t it seem like just yesterday we were graduating high school?”

I nodded. I just wanted him to leave. I didn’t know what it was like to graduate high school the way he did. My GED was earned in jail. No cap and gown, no ceremony, no party.

“Do you need a ride home?”

“No, that’s okay, but thank you. My…” I panicked. Bebe was coming for me, but what role was Bebe to me now? It’s complicated, so I could say “someone,” but I already said “my,” so it would come out “my someone.” It was all going to spill out soon anyway. Fuck it. “My girlfriend is picking me up.”

He stared at me. “Ah. I wouldn’t have thought.”

“Thought what?” I crossed my arms.

“I don’t want to offend you.”

“I’m not offended easily. Lay it on me.”

He was starting to sweat more, but I suspected it wasn’t because of the weather. 

“I didn’t think you were straight.”

“I’m not. Not really.”

Those silver eyes went wide again. “Oh?”

“You were only half wrong.”

“Oh. I get it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Like I said: Not offended.”

“It’s just that people like me can usually tell. There are vibes, you know.”

“I know.”

That seemed to put him a bit more at ease, but something about his expression was still off. A little color was drawn. His mouth was tight. It looked like disappointment. Maybe a bit of sadness.

“Well, have a good weekend, then.” He turned to leave, placing his hand over his eyes.

“You too. See you later?”

“Later.”

* * *

“Don’t you need to take a lactose pill or something first?” Bebe asked, staring down my brownie sundae.

I stuck the plastic spoon in, listened to the  _ squish _ , and the scraping against styrofoam. “I’m already balls deep, Bebe. No going back now.”

“You’ll shit your pants,” she said, licking her cone with her pink cat’s tongue.

“In the five years you’ve known me, have I ever shit my pants?”

“No, but if you shit your pants now, I’m going to pretend we never met.”

We were sitting in the corner of Tony’s, a 50s-styled ice cream parlor with photos of Elvis Presley everywhere, even in the bathroom. It’s strange, to have Elvis smiling out at you, reminding you that you’re nothing but a hound dog while trying to pee. A giant statue of Marilyn Monroe in her billowing white dress stands in the front window. Her face is painted a little cross-eyed but it’s still cute.

I dug out a brownie chunk and shoved it in my mouth. Within that one bite, all the bullshit of the week fizzled away. The jukebox clicked to another sensuous doo-wop jingle. 

“You’d look cute in a poodle skirt,” I told her.

“No…”

“Yes. Well, you’d look cute in anything.”

“Even in a vault suit? This music is making me want to play  _ Fallout 3 _ again.”

“Of course you would. And yeah, same.”

We ate slowly, watching a couple of toddlers on the checkerboard floor, jumping from black tile to black tile like game pieces. One little boy stood a few feet away, staring at Bebe. She waved at him and he smacked his hands over his mouth, ran and clung to his mother’s legs.

“He probably thought you were Princess Peach,” I said.

“Oh, stop.”

_ Oh, stop. _

I looked down into my bowl, lifted the spoon like Arthur lifted the sword from the stone, pretended not to hear that nasally, monotone harmonize with hers.

“So, tell me about the job! You haven’t said anything.”

This is such a regular question, yet I fumbled for words like I was trying to describe infinity. 

“I… well. There was a lot of - I don’t know. It was a bit messy. A lot of salt.”

“Salt?”

“In the water samples. We’re trying to desalinate some water.”

“Oh, cool.”

“I’m still trying to get used to everything. I’ve never worked a full-time job before. In a lab, nevertheless.”

“Yeah, that’s a big change.”

“I’m sorry, again, for not really talking to you. I just… it’s hard, you know?”

“It’s okay. I wasn’t really expecting anything, to be honest.”

We continued in silence as Elvis watched over us.

* * *

She took me home, watered my flowers with me, then we snuck in the back of the house so Kenny wouldn’t ask her again if she wanted her nipples pierced, and we went up to my room.

After I showered, put aloe on my neck and shoulders, I walked into her watching TV on my bed and fiddling with the gold charms on her ankle bracelet.

“There’s a Lifetime movie on about a personal trainer that’s also a serial killer. Want to watch?”

“Hell yeah.” I plopped beside her on the bed.

The platonic act didn’t last long. By the commercial break, she was straddling my lap and kissing me. I wanted to give her what she wanted, but I was so damn tired. Sitting on me must have felt like sitting on soggy bread.

And I was confused. Couples on breaks don’t usually do this, right? Did we actually want to stay together or did we just not know how to let go?

She pulled away. “You’re not into this.”

“I am - I mean, my blood is rushing into the appropriate places, but Bebe, please. I’m exhausted. It’s nothing against you.”

“Fine.” She rolled off of me, threw her legs over the side of the bed, and started tying on her sandals.

“Hold on, you don’t need to leave.”

“You don’t actually want me here.”

“Yes, I do.” I took her hand. “But what you said to me on Sunday makes me feel lost. I don’t know what you want out of this relationship.”

She rubbed her temple with her other hand.  _ Pop, pop, pop. _ On-screen, a man was being rolled into a yoga mat and getting a weight rack dropped on his neck.

“It’s difficult to get physical with you,” I continued, “because you hurt me.”

“You’ve hurt me, too.”

“I know…”

“Can you just hold me, please? Like you used to?”

“Yes.”

She lied down in front of me and I wrapped my arm around her waist. I had missed this, but it hurt and I knew it shouldn’t be happening. I guess I’m not the only one with a fucked up pain-pleasure scale. I pulled her into me, burying my face into her back.


	7. iris (rainbows & hope)

Some days are harder than others, writing about this. Most of the time, I stay in my room, light a candle, then scribble away on graphing paper. My therapist has given me ballpoint pens because pencils are slow and I can’t write fast enough to catch up with my thoughts. Half the writing is in small cursive, the other half is large, taking up several boxes with shaking lines. 

Other times I need to be sitting out in the kitchen (right now I’m watching Cartman make pudding) because I’ll get too far up in my own head and need someone to ground me.

When I’m done, I can do what I want with this story.

Burning it was a suggestion. That way I’ve put my experience out in the universe, can forget it all and start over, watching the words ash away, smoke into the cosmos forever. 

Must I burn it all away? Do I have to condemn good with bad? There are quiet moments I want so much to squirrel away for myself: in the bloom of the afternoon when our hearts were at their fullest and our hands were always finding ways to touch and all I wanted to do was kiss his throat, he drifted down the side of my face like a beautiful ghost, whispering, “I want to hold you so badly right now.”

I want to steal the memory and replay it until I die, live inside it like a snowglobe that never breaks and nothing else has ever happened.

Another option is to bury it. My qualm is this: say someone else found it, sealed airtight, 50 years from now? It won’t be like finding the cave paintings in France or the letters of David Foster Wallace. I’m not important. All they will read is a rambling account of two people who fit so right yet got everything so wrong and wonder where this now old man named Kyle is. If I make it that long.

Do I burn or bury? Burn or bury…

I feel like I may cry now and I’ll be damned if I let anyone see dried tear stains and feathered ink.

* * *

The night I held Bebe for the last time, I cried into her back. She couldn’t see me, couldn’t hear me, but felt tears on her shoulder blade and the tip of my nose grow warm. When I saw her face again, I could see she’d been crying too. 

Normally, she would have spent the night, but we decided it was best if she went home and so we wouldn’t have to wake up next to each other and cry more.

I carried her on my back, outside to her car, hugged her, watched red tail lights shrink down the street and out of sight around the corner. We didn’t see each other for two months after that.

That first Saturday off in months, I slept in until noon and woke up from dreams about Bebe telling me she actually hated me, wanted to kill me, wanted to reach in through my mouth, and tear out my veins.

Someone was mowing their lawn. Sunshine slanted across my desk. The creaking ceiling fan spun slowly, and I shook myself from the hazy after-dream, pulled the blankets taut just under my eyes. With a weak hand, I reached over for the phone.

A text from Tweek: “Some guy walked in first thing this morning, stopped to look at me, and said ‘you’re not Kyle’.”

Me: “They’ll get used to you, don’t worry. They did the same thing to me when I switched to mornings.”

Then, a text from Wendy: “I have today off. Do you wanna go do something? Lol I need to not do housework.”

It was from several hours ago.

I responded: “Sorry, I just woke up. Give me like 20 minutes but yeah sure.”

Wendy: “I came with Stan to the shop so I’m downstairs. Damn, how late did you stay up?”

“I didn’t! I OVERSLEPT.”

The nightmare about Bebe made me sweat a lot, and it was still raging heat outside, so I took another shower before I got down there. I was starving, too. The only thing Bebe and I ate was that ice cream, and though my stomach ached from the lactose at first, those pains faded then twisted into voracious growls. But appetite coming back is a sign of receding DARK THOUGHTS.

I love hanging out with Wendy. We’re almost the same person even though she’s way more stable than I am. She’s always been sisterly to me, so much so that if I had had a real sister, I wouldn’t want her. Cartman likes to make jokes that we’ll run away together but that could never happen. She loves Stan too much. Our family dynamic is like this:

**Nonexistent Parents**

**↓ ↓**

**Stan - Wendy Kyle - Cartman**

**↓**

**Kenny**

  
  


Cartman can gab all he wants but both of know that the real fake marriage is between me and him:

“Did you throw away my bananas, Kahl?”

“They were all brown and gross.”

“They were ripe for banana bread!”

“That’s basically a war crime, Cartman.”

“Don’t throw away my shit.”

“Don’t buy disgusting excuses for a fruit.”

And it usually goes on like that until Kenny pipes up and tells us, “Please don’t split up, I don’t actually want two Christmases.” 

“You wouldn’t get two Christmases, Kenny, you’d get Christmas and Hanukkah because Kahl’s a Jew.”

“I don’t even celebrate Hanukkah anymore.”

Bebe said she felt like an outsider, wasn’t too close with Cartman and Kenny but they were pleasant enough when she visited (except for Kenny’s wanting to pierce her nipples, but he exists on an extraterrestrial platform that regular social standards can’t be compared to). 

Often I wondered how Craig would have fit in. If he truly believed in us like he said he did, would he have moved in with me, me with him? We decided one night we would move out together wherever our lives took us, whether it be the mountains, the hills of New Mexico, maybe a villa in Berlin? Craig is really fluent in German. We dreamed big. 

Air conditioning blasted me when I walked downstairs. Buzzing was already happening, with some early 2000s alt-rock station playing. I wanted to ask Kenny about Craig, if he remembered him as a customer, what he was like in the outside world, but Kenny was busy giving a mother and daughter matching nose piercings. I kissed two fingers then lightly pressed them into the nose of a buck.

“We didn’t see you last night.” Cartman sat in the corner of the waiting room, sketching on a tablet.

“I had Bebe over,” I said. No point in lying.

“Waste of time, dude.”

“No, it wasn’t. I care about her.”

“I don’t think she cares about you though.”

Before I could open my mouth to say “maybe all it takes is for one of us to care,” Wendy came out of the bathroom, drying her hands on a paper towel. I’m glad I couldn’t say it. It made no sense. I’ve been trying to make it make sense for years. It wasn’t so much that only one of us cared - we both did. We just never cared at the same time; always finding new ways to shoot each other down, never quite knowing how to build the other one back up. 

What a mess.

It wouldn’t matter now. She was gone, off to enjoy her summer without having to worry about our stalemate.

“Let’s roll, trash boy,” said Wendy. Oh good, she knows about our squad name.

“Have fun with MY wife!” we heard Stan yell from one of the cubicles.

Just as we were about to open the door, Cartman said to me: “FYI - the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”

“It’s true,” Wendy said, passing under the OPEN sign.

“I’d happily let myself be crushed by a steam roller,” I said.

“In a sexual way?”

“Bye, Cartman.”

* * *

First, Wendy took us through a drive-thru so I could get something hot in my stomach, then we ended up walking around the mall for a while. Both of us are fast walkers; we had to remind ourselves to slow down and enjoy the scenery of fake plants, blue fluorescent lights, teams of teenagers in huddles outside the representative store of whatever clique they belonged to. 

Wendy asked me about work while we walked around the rug section of a furniture outlet.

“I like it a lot so far,” I said, lifting the corner of a 6” x 6” that had pools of yellow with purple confetti inside them. It looked like vomit. I could have left it at that, but she would know I’m hiding something. “Had a bad introduction with the other student, but Dr. Vince told him to lay off, so now he’s faking being nice to me.”

She scrunched her nose the same way Stan does sometimes. I don’t remember who rubbed off on who. “What does he do?”

“He’ll ask me random questions, like ‘do you ever go home and just eat Nutella straight from the jar’?”

“Do you?” she ran her hand over a blanket, not looking at me.

“Never. Oh, and yesterday he asked me if I’ve ever fried an egg on the sidewalk.”

She pressed her lips together in a tight smile. “He does this a lot?”

“All the time.”

“It sounds like he’s flirting with you.”

“Don’t you dare say that.”

“It’s not that far-fetched,” she said, passing by a vanity set.

I saw myself in the mirror. “I think it is. No one has ever just started randomly flirting with me.

“Don’t be so sure he’s not yet. Have you ever caught him staring at you?”

“Not really. I try to keep my head down and focus on the work.”

“Has he ever,” she bent her fingers into air quotes, “‘accidentally’ touched you?”

“I mean, he touched my back when I showed him my sunburn, but I don’t think it meant anything.”

“Dude, he’s flirting. There’s no way anyone tries that hard to be  _ fake nice _ .”

“I don’t know. Still seems up in the air.”

“Do you like him?”

“I have Bebe.”

Sighing, Wendy waltzed into the model kitchens. She opened and closed cabinets until I spoke again.

“I feel bad,” I lowered my voice, “I do kind of like him. I don’t know why. He was so cold to me at first.”

Dark oak doors wide open, she turned her head over her shoulder. “Maybe it turned you on.”

“Oh god, don’t.”

“I’m kidding. No, you should totally be with someone who’s nice to you, of course.”

“He did seem a little upset when I told him I have a girlfriend.”

“Why would you tell him that?”

“I had to! She was about to pick me up and he was acting like he wanted to drive me home and-”

“-KYLE. That was totally an opening.”

“He’s driven me home before and nothing happened.”

“Would you have wanted something to happen?”

“Like what?” I flipped open a washing machine and leaned in, watching my floating, distorted reflection peer around. “Am I supposed to just reach over and grab his junk?”

“Yes.”

“No, Wendy. You’ve watched too much porn.” I twisted myself out of the washer to see her staring down a stained-glass window of a green hill, sunshine, and cats lounging about. It was definitely about to come home with us. I’ve always loved how cat people will also decorate their homes with cat things as if they’re building a shrine.

“Life is so short. Why cockblock yourself?”

“You know why.”

“It’s sweet that you’re trying to be faithful even though you’re not together. But you’re not. You and Bebe are  _ over  _ and you both know it. I like her, and I like you, but you’re no good together. You haven’t even acted like a couple since last year.”

It was then, staring at that cat glass, it finally sunk in. I used to snort lines of cocaine off of random girls’ bellies and now here I am window shopping in a furniture outlet for fun, and single. Not that there’s anything really wrong with that, it’s just a stark contrast from being a walking bag of drugs and anger to someone who needs a whole day of recovery after two glasses of wine and dinosaur nuggets. And now I had no girlfriend, to top it off.

The break-up didn’t feel like a gunshot, or even a cut like most break-ups do, but rather, an old scab that had finally fallen away, lost in bedsheets in the middle of the night.

“I’m just saying,” Wendy continued, “there’s no harm in flirting back.”

* * *

“You didn’t mention you had a girlfriend.”

He had managed to rope me into going to lunch with him again. This time, we were sitting on one of the picnic tables outside under a square, black umbrella. The air-conditioning in the lab was semi-fixed, blowing semi-cool winds, but the temperature outside also cooled off so we didn’t mind. We would crack open the windows too if we wanted (putting tape over what we now called the “bee hole”, of course).

The last few days I had taken a liking to eat lunch alone in a designated spot in front of a compass of woods. I would sit on a broken log and watch the small stream that carried dead leaves into other spaces. Squirrels sometimes skittered up and snatched my dropped food. Deer, always two or three at a time, often bound through the trees, never noticing me sitting there, doing grazing of my own. 

I needed alone time, now that I was getting comfortable in the lab. With Wendy’s words sticking to my brain, I noticed what could be flirting. Still, when I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t help but continue thinking it was only a  façade , just the niceties of putting up with each other until summer’s end. The beginning of week two is blurry, but I remember us talking so much that Susan (I feel so weird not calling her Dr. Vince) said, “okay boys, less chattering, more science.”

I was prepared to take my lunch out to my spot again when he asked me to sit with him.

“I want to get to know you more,” he said.

“There’s not much else to know.” 

I must have looked offended because then he looked away and mumbled something along the lines of “you don’t have to/shouldn’t have asked.”

Truthfully, I wanted to. I was just nervous. What if he asked something I wasn’t ready to delve into? He seemed genuine, and I felt bad. So I conceded.

Of course, one of the first questions was about Bebe while I was sipping from my water bottle.

“Was I supposed to tell you?” I asked.

“People usually mention their partners in casual conversation. Unless they’re hiding something.”

“I have nothing to hide.”

“You haven’t mentioned her this week, either.”

“So?”

“So, I’m just curious what the deal is.”

“There is no deal,” I said, pointing a baby carrot in his face. “We just don’t talk about each other.”

“Wow, sounds very loving. It’s not a serious relationship then?”

“There is no relationship. It’s complicated.”

“What you just said makes no sense. Either you’re together or you’re not.”

I waved the carrot again. “Why do you  _ care? _ ” I was half-laughing. I didn’t want him to think I was actually angry.

“I don’t. I’m just curious.”

“I’m not a science experiment.”

“I know, I was just,” he was spreading Nutella over a slice of toast. I could smell the chocolate and hazelnut from where I sat. How did this guy’s teeth not rot out of his head? “You know.”

I put my accusatory carrot down. “Okay, look. There are a million little reasons why it’s not working out, but the straw that broke the camel’s back is when I told her I’m queer, and she’s not cool with it. That’s it.”

“Are you serious? That’s kind of fucked up.”

“It is what it is. Everyone has a preference. I don’t hold it against her.” I bit into my sandwich, looking down, hating that he was watching me chew. Did he want me to cry into the bread? God damn.

“Desert island books,” he said suddenly.

“Sorry?”

“If you were stuck on a desert island, what three books would you want with you?”

What a way to change the subject. “Uh, I’m not sure.”

“I can go first. Maybe it’ll give you some ideas.”

“Okay, go for it.”

“First,  _ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy _ .”

How many times has he played this? Or thought of it? That answer came out fast.

“Second,  _ Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? _ ”

He paused after this one. I nibbled and said, “A good choice.”

He seemed happy with my approval, eyes dancing and cheeks turning pink. I couldn’t help looking at him now and thinking about how he looked on the first day. 

“Okay, third.  _ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone _ .”

I smiled to myself. “I think I’d take that one too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, they’re all good books to distract from a bad situation, but that one…” was I really about to tell him this next thing that I’ve never told anyone else? It slipped out of me before I could think too hard about it. “After my accident, I was in the hospital for a while. They had someone come in and read to me while I recovered. One of the books was Harry Potter and it really made me forget, for a moment, that I was hospitalized. Among other things.”

Craig stared at me for a long time. Other students and faculty brushed by us in their summer casuals, laughing and gossiping together. I finished my sandwich in silence. A breeze, full with the scent of rosemary, wafted between us.

“What’s your second one, then?” He was catching on to what I would and wouldn’t discuss, I think.

“My second one…  _ Alice in Wonderland _ .”

“Of course you would.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just not surprised you like that book.”

_ Why, because I’m crazy? _ I wanted to ask. Also,  _ you don’t actually know jack shit about me.  _ Instead, I said, “A lot of people like it. For good reason.”

“That’s fair. So… number three?”

“Hm…  _ The Sound and the Fury _ .” 

Usually, people recoil when I tell them I like one of Faulkner’s most tedious books. Craig’s eyes went wide but if there was any real disgust, he did well with stowing it away so as not to hurt my feelings. It turns into a nasty thing when someone insinuates you have bad taste.

“I’ve always found it to be a bit facetious,” he said slowly, watching my eyes that were watching him speak. “It’s difficult to pull that book apart unless you’re in a class with a professor explaining it to you.”

I loved that he said ‘pulling it apart’ as if it were the supple, white meat in the leg of a crab. “Do you  _ really _ think that?”

Wide eyes again. Somewhere, in the hazy nebulous of his ego, I hit something. How could he not be used to questioning his own line of thoughts? Was there never a dissenting opinion that came his way?  _ Come on, defend your thesis, Craig. _

“Well, I suppose if you bear through the first section, it gets easier to thread it back together as you go along. I had to spend many weeks on it, though.”

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing, to spend so much time on a book.”

“Well, it takes away parts of your life. I’d rather just read a book through and be done with it.”

“Do you ever read them again?”

“Why should I? What’s been said has been said. I know what’s coming already, no point in revisiting.”

“Sometimes you find new things.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“Also, if you’re stuck on an island, you’d be forced to reread anyway.”

“Also true.” He stared off into the distance for a moment. I couldn’t tell anymore if he was silently criticizing me for opposing him, or if this is just what a conversation is like between two consenting adults with cast-iron opinions. Then he looked at me, soft, and asked, “Why do you like  _ Sound and the Fury, _ then?”

“Well. I liked piecing it together like a puzzle. The shifting perspectives, the time-traveling, that complicated ass family dynamic. And I love how everyone is grossly human. Some people never change. I don’t know. I admire that Faulkner just put his balls to the wall and tried something different.”

Craig was still watching me with a small smile. “What was your favorite section?”

“Quentin’s.”

“Really? But he kills himself.”

_ Not like I haven't thought of tying weights to my ankles and jumping in a river too. _ “Yes, but I relate to him in a lot of ways,” I said nothing more, hoping he wouldn’t press, hoping he’d just nod and say “we all do,” seeing in my face that I didn’t want to go deeper. He was getting good at registering my unease with certain topics, but this time, he ignored it.

“How do you relate?”

Heart palpitations. The first word I wanted to say was “closeted,” but that would see all the way down an avenue of hurt I couldn’t venture again, and a frame of mind I was pushing out of. 

“He talks about _ time _ a lot. He breaks his watch so he doesn’t have to know the time, but it keeps pulsing in his pocket. He goes out and the town clock is ticking. He knows that, in a sense, time isn’t real, but he also knows the world will keep ticking along whether he’s alive to see it or not.”

“It sounds like it gives you anxiety, Kyle.”

“It does… Time goes by so fast yet so slow. I wish I could smash the face of every alarm, rip the arms off of every clock in the world, and live timelessly. But it doesn’t matter. Seasons will change, I’ll get sunspots and wrinkles around my eyes. I’ll still know.”

Staring at me again. I stared back. 

“Wouldn’t you rather move forward than be still for an eternity?” 

Was this an opening? What was he really asking me?

“Maybe for some things. But I like this moment. I could talk with you like this for a few eternities.”

“I guess there’s no one answer for everything.” He reached for his Coke bottle. “But for what it’s worth, I like this too. No one has ever spoken to me the way you speak to me.”

“How?”

He took a swig then said, “With honesty. I like the way you say things.”

Later on, Susan left at 4:30 to pick up her daughter and we had that last half-hour together. When he reached over for a pH strip, I let him “accidentally” brush my arm. 


	8. yellow roses (friendship)

It was around this time I considered learning to drive again.

Bumming rides off of people and walking are only fun for so long, and I wanted some independence back. There weren’t many obstacles - my accident, though severe, wasn’t exactly my fault according to the investigators, my testimony that I barely got through, and cameras on the building we were close to. However, I did  _ steal _ the car. That black mark in my record made it difficult to move on with life. 

As it neared my 26th birthday, I was eligible to earn my license back.

But whenever Cartman opened the door of his Toyota and gestured for me to get in, I found myself at a standstill, unable to climb in and wrap my fingers around the leather wheel.

“We’ll just go around the block,” he’d say. “It’s only 20 miles per hour, slow enough for you to get used to again.”

“With my luck, I’ll probably still hit someone’s dog.”

“Yeah, I’d say that’s lucky,” he said, grinning from under that rug of unwashed hair and whatever band-themed beanie he wore that day.

“You’re awful.”

“You know what’s actually awful? You’re not even giving yourself a chance.”

“I’ll fuck it up.”

“You don’t know that unless you try. If you go in convinced that you’re going to fuck it up, then you’ll fuck it up.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

“So, either way, I should keep my expectations low.”

“You’re just twisting shit around now, Kahl.”

Cartman sees right through me 110% of the time. We’re both excellent at talking our way out of things we don’t want to do.

This was something I wanted, but I still walked away. After a month of him trying to get me back on the road, he gave up. I don’t blame him.

When I relayed this strife to Craig one day after Susan has left and we had those lazy last minutes in the lab, I thought he would side with Cartman, but instead, he set down the flask he was washing out and shook his head.

“He shouldn’t be pushing you like that. You’re not god damn Ricky Bobby.”

I laughed. Out of all the references he could make, he chose a fictional Nascar driver.

“Cartman would definitely put a cougar in the car and tell me to drive with the manifested fear.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Really though, he’d probably dump all of Stan and Wendy’s cats in the car with me. I don’t know which would be worse.”

“You should drive again only if you feel like it. Only when you’re ready.”

By now, Craig knew almost everything about my current life: our two-story house that was converted into a tattoo parlor and apartment, the occasional yelling or moaning that drifted up through my floorboards, the garden that I was working so diligently on, our Sunday night smoke-outs with Stan, Wendy, and the cats. All of Cartman and Kenny’s eccentricities. I told him about managing South Perk - how instead of getting raises, the owner gave me baklava. And one night, after an overtime shift, someone left an eighth of weed in the tip jar (which I gladly took). A few days before I got the call for the lab job, Tweek dropped a macaron and screamed bloody murder as it rolled across the tile like a spare tire. 

I even shared some things about Bebe. Mostly her expectations, and my failure to meet those expectations. The oh so loving name of “prize donkey” she’d given me, her comment on my “ugly scar,” to which he said, “I like your tattoos. I would get one but I feel like I wouldn’t be able to decide on what to get.”

I tried to be objective as possible when I talked about what happened, even saying nice things about her so it wouldn’t seem like I was complaining, but bias was forming on his part.

He had yet to say anything about my scarring. When he looked at me now, he looked straight into my eyes. It was unnerving at first, but as the weeks progressed, it made me hard. Then weak.

Over the last few days, I had learned three more things about him:

  1. His mother owns a supermarket and his little sister works as a cashier there. 
  2. He owns an entire bookshelf of German literature dating from the 1700s to the 20th century. (I asked how much he rereads them and he rolled his eyes at me)
  3. He is obsessed with politics and keeps a pocket-sized version of the U.S. Constitution in his office. (I had yet to see his office or understand what he was talking about when he whipped out his senatorial jargon) (I often snuck out my phone to look up what he was talking about so he wouldn’t think I was dumb) (At the time I didn’t consume a lot of political content because it gives me anxiety)



I was learning how he needed to be talked to, and from his point of view, it must have sounded like Cartman was being straight-up cruel to me rather than trying to supplement my wanting to drive but shrinking away in fear.

“I  _ want _ to get my license back, I told him that. But when it comes time to get in the car, I freeze up.”

“Oh, okay. I get that. I got into an accident when I was 19 and was too scared to drive for a while. It took my mom at least a year to convince me to get back on the freeway.”

“What happened?” I turned off the ladybug radio that was playing some mellow 80s jam. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I don’t mind.”

We were closing up shop now, making sure the machines were unplugged, the surfaces sanitized. The lights were off, and we stood for a moment, alone with only the evening sunlight stretched across the floor.

“I got lucky,” he said. “My Jeep stalled out on the way to work and this lady rear-ended me. It wasn’t her fault, though. You know how early morning traffic can be. I ended up drifting into the middle of the highway and got hit by another car. The back of my head whacked the seat so hard that I had migraines for a month. I had to go to physical therapy. It sucked.”

“Wow…”

“And I really shouldn’t have done this, but I was afraid I was going to get hit again, so I left the car.”

He opened the door for me and we went out into the hallway.

“What do you mean? You didn’t actually run out into the road, did you?”

“I did… I ran over to the median and called 911.”

“Someone could have run over you…”

“I know, but as I said, I was 19. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Wow…” I said again. 

On the elevator ride down, I imagined what Craig was like at 19. How different would he have been? It was almost a decade ago. When he was 19, I was 17. Would we have been friends if we had known each other? I doubted it. It might have been another awkward Adam situation. 

As we approached the ground floor, I said, “I’m glad you made it out of that okay.”

He looked me up and down, then smiled, full-teeth. “Me too.”

I wanted to say,  _ don’t look at me like that. _

And he’d say,  _ like what? _

_ Like you want me. _

_ But I do. _


	9. lily of the valley (sweetness)

Sunday the 26th. I had nothing but another year tacked on to my life.

The year before, for my birthday, Bebe and I drove out to an aquarium where we could reach into cold water and stroke 50-year old sturgeons from Lake Superior. To this day I can still feel the slimy ridges of their backs on my fingertips. I remember how purple Bebe’s hand was when she finally drew it from the water. I held that hand for the rest of the day.

She texted warm wishes, I gave a warm reply. Then there was nothing more.

Birthdays have always been strange to me. Being forced to digest yourself when you don’t know who you have filled me with small, overlapping screams of dread. When I think of how much of my life has passed, violin strings break in my ears. I grind my teeth.

Not that I’m afraid of dying. I’ve seen someone die before, and I’ve come close myself. 

I believe when we die, all that happens is we go back to the place we were before being born. No lake of fire and no pearly gates. I take comfort in that.

I’m just saying. You know how I feel about  **time.**

I wanted to get through my birthday with minimal social interaction, but what is planned and what takes place never coexist.

May is a great time in Colorado to plant peppers and squash. Cartman likes to fry zucchini pancakes, so come July when the squash is ready, he gets really excited. And I love spicy foods, so the peppers are a centerpiece for me. So, I slathered on sunscreen (more freckles already developed on my nose) and worked until 11 am. 

With everything planted and watered, I wiped my forehead with my arm, went back inside, walked upstairs to find Kenny and Cartman lounging in their pajamas, balls deep in the wake and bake process in the kitchen. A singular, chocolate cupcake with coconut shavings on it, a small box, and a card were waiting for me in the breakfast nook. When I saw the thick frosting of the cupcake, my first thought was:  _ Oh, Craig would be all over that. _

They made me a birthday card filled with crude doodles (I know too many ways of how to fuck a cake now), and this tee-shirt with cats photoshopped into burritos, flying through space, shooting laser beams from their eyes. Kenny picked it out.

* * *

I remembered I promised to bring flowers for South Perk’s outside seating area, a begrudgingly accepted that my day wasn’t over yet. I could have put it off for another afternoon, but it would be a quick job and I wanted to get it over with.

I gathered up extra marigold and columbine, packed them into long planters, grabbed zip-tyes, put them in a red wagon, and set off. I would have asked to be driven, but after 40 hours a week of sitting down, I was feeling soft around the core and knew I needed to walk. Kenny and Cartman were too stoned off their asses anyway.

That day was gorgeous. Blue skies with scattered cumulus clouds, a big swelling sun. Dandelions sprouted everywhere, kids played in lawn sprinklers, stopping now and then to open their arms and embrace the mountainous breeze from the Rockies. For the first time in a long time, I felt I belonged there. I  _ was _ the clouds, the sun, the bright dandelions, a child. Maybe I would be alright.

An old man in khaki shorts and a sun hat called out to me, “hey, flower boy!” (better than what Cartman calls me, which is Farmer Gay). I stopped. He hobbled over to me, held on to the top of his wire fence with both sun-spotted hands and kept me cocooned in an hour-long story beginning with a local flea market, and ending with how his wife used to plant sunflowers in their backyard this time of year. I glanced over their fence and saw no sunflowers. “Used to.”

He ended the conversation by giving me sunflowers. I refused at first, but he insisted. It’s difficult for me to take anything from anyone because I feel like no matter what it is, I don’t deserve it. Another reason to dislike my birthday. 

I doubted the seeds were any good. Lord knows how long he had been saving them. Still, I thanked him and moved on.

When I finally reached South Perk, the place was in an early afternoon lull. I parked the wagon on the patio, went inside, and made myself an iced coffee and helped Tweek with a payroll issue before he went home for the day.

A couple of other baristas took his spot. We exchanged stiff small talk before I went back outside.

“It won’t take me long, and then I’ll be out of your hair,” I told them. I try to be a “cool” manager but it comes off as more awkward than anything.

As I zip-tied flowers to the railing outside, my thoughts drifted. 

I wondered if my parents remembered it was my birthday. I wondered where they were living now, if they have a seaside manor or a rickety colonial with a bad paint job. Do they have photos of me hanging in their living room? Doubt it. If they did, how do they explain the unseen child, the fragmented teenager, to guests? Ike has to be 19 now, right? When his friends come over and see a family photo, does Ike point me out and say “that  _ was _ my brother, but he screwed up.” When my parents meet new people and get asked about their children, am I mentioned? What’s the narrative that gets tossed around? Do I have any honor in the Broflovski family lore? All of these  _ what if, what if, what if _ questions with no answers.

My hand slipped and the zip-tye fell loose. The planter dropped sideways, hanging by one end on the railing. Clumps of soil fell to the concrete. I sighed, tying again, then got down to my knees to scoop up soil back into the planter.

If I had had the help I so desperately needed before everything went to hell, would I be a totally different person now?

I shook it off. No use pondering on what could have been when things just rigidly are.

I didn’t hear his voice at first, being so zoned out and all. He had to repeat himself:

“Kyle?”

I looked up to see Craig and a short girl, maybe 21-22 years old, peaking over the railing at me.

“Oh, holy shit. Hi.” I stood, wiping my hands on my pants. “What are you doing here?”

It was strange to see him out of professional clothes for the first time. He had holes in his jeans, black and white checkered Vans, and a NASA tee-shirt, but instead of NASA in the logo, it said ROGUE. Made sense for a politics-obsessed scientist. I was a little embarrassed, now wearing the burrito cat shirt Kenny had bought for me. Later in the summer, Craig would admit to me he liked the shirt - better yet, taking it off of me.

“We were out on a walk and I recognized your hair,” he said.

“From all the way over there?” I pointed to the sidewalk several feet away.

“Yes…”

“Your hair is super red,” the girl said. “Anyone would see it.”

“Trish…” his voice dropped to a low I’d never heard before. She rolled her eyes. “Sorry, Kyle. This is my sister, Tricia. Tricia, this is my friend, Kyle. We work in the lab together.”

“Hi,” I said. 

I outstretched my hand, but instead of shaking it, she turned to her brother, wide-eyed, and asked, “Wait, is this THE Kyle?”

Do strange introductions just run like diarrhea in this family?

_ “Tricia.” _ The voice dropped even lower.

“Sorry,” she said to me. “Craig has told me a lot about you.”

“Hopefully good things.”

“Oh, definitely all good things,” she said this with a smirk that made me want to ask more, but Craig was turning red, looking every which way but my direction, so I held back.

It was then, I knew for sure, through the unholy power of siblings exposing each other, that Craig had a thing for me. I tried to not let myself get too flustered about it and focus instead on Tricia.

The first thing I noticed about her was her hair. It was also a bit red. Nowhere near my dark copper hues, though, hers was strawberry-blonde. Her eyes were dark green. Craig’s nose was round, hers was pointed delicately. They didn’t look alike whatsoever, yet I could feel their brother-sister bond. I wanted to see what their parents looked like.

“Oh!” Craig suddenly broke his shyness and grabbed my arm. His hands were soft. “Happy birthday, dude!”

“Thank you…” I felt like I could have fainted, his thumbs pressed into my skin like that.

“You’re working on your birthday?” Tricia asked.

“I’m not. I’m just dropping off these flowers and going home.”

She bent down to smell the columbine. “Craig has a present for you, you know.”

His hands dropped my arm.  _ “Why do you need to blurt out everything?” _

She shrugged at him, as if to say “sorry I’m just trying to grease the wheels, brother.”

He flipped her off. She double-flipped him off.

I waved my hand down between them like a draw bridge. “You didn’t have to get me anything, Craig.”

“I know. But I wanted to.”

I smiled. “That’s really nice of you.”

“I try.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Tricia.

Craig had never been inside South Perk, so I told them they could come inside for drinks if they stopped flipping each other off. 

They didn’t stay long, meandering in the dimly lit lobby, surveying the art deco paintings that needed dusting. The other baristas were polite but posted themselves in other places, casually observing as I made Tricia some fruity iced tea thing and a chocolate shake for Craig.

I wanted to corner him, but couldn’t decide if, once I did corner him, would I kiss him or grill him? I wanted answers. But I kept myself cool, forced naivety, ignoring all the popping in my brain. 

His phone started buzzing - whoever it was on the other end of the line was yelling, Craig barely getting in a word except for “Yes” and “I know.” 

I looked at Tricia.

She frowned. “Asshole roommates, you know?”

“I guess.”

“We have to go,” Craig whispered, holding the bottom of the phone slightly angled away from his mouth. “He’s throwing a fit. The neighbors are going to call the cops if he doesn’t quiet down.”

“Fine.”

Craig turned to me. The man in the phone was still yelling. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Kyle. Happy birthday.”

Tricia raised her drink to me as she backed into the door and they went outside together.

That was the first time Craig stepped into my territory. Soon, he would mark everything.

* * *

We forgot the next day was Memorial Day, so campus was closed. His “see you tomorrow” was voided. I was looking forward to seeing him and got upset with myself for forgetting the holiday and not mentally preparing myself for the absence.

On top of that, I was slower than usual from getting extra baked with everyone the night before (maybe it was a good thing I didn’t have to work) and unable to grasp the world around me. According to Cartman, I cried the night before. Hard. I cried while holding Kelso in my shaking arms, Wendy patting my back. No one knew what I was crying about, no one could understand what I was saying. I don’t remember any of it.

I sobered up when I saw a text from Bebe:

“We forgot something…”

“Huh?” I hated when she did this. It felt like being coaxed into a box with a stick and a string. 

“We’re supposed to go to Scott’s wedding in July…”

Oh fuck, that’s right. Scott Malkinson is Bebe’s manager. He’s a young dude but already a talent management genius. Even with his prominent lisp, it doesn’t stop him from being charismatic. There was a time he almost passed out on Bebe’s couch from low blood sugar and I was the one to pump him with orange juice. He strains himself sometimes with all the multi-tasking, but he’s helped Bebe get so many sponsorships and collaborations. All around, he’s just a really great guy and I’m glad to see him take such a big, happy step in his life.

“Maybe you should just go,” I typed. “I like Scott but he doesn’t know me that well, anyway.”

“I already RSVP’d for two.”

“You can’t change it? I’m sure there’s still time.”

“It would be embarrassing.”

“Take someone else, then. It won’t be hard for you to find a date.”

“It won’t bother you if I go with another guy?”

“No? You can do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

Then: “Indifference is worse than hate, Kyle.”

I chewed on this for a minute. Of course, I cared. Of course, it would be painful to think about her holding hands, laughing, dancing, kissing, fucking somebody else. 

Of course, it made me hypocritical too. Loving her wasn’t something I had quite let go of (and never will, in a way, though the type of love has changed), at the same time, I wanted her to move on, talk shit about me to a new boyfriend, whatever. This way, I could have permission to move on too.

She sent another text: “I’d really rather go with you. Even if it’s just as friends.”

“I suppose…”

“Let me know soon. I have to buy plane tickets.”

“...why?”

“The wedding is in Florida.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t afford to fly there right now.”

“I’ll pay for it.”

“Absolutely not. You work really hard for your money.”

“So do you. I’m the one who spends most of the day on Reddit.”

“I’m still uncomfortable with this. But I’ll let you know by tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

I spent the whole morning outside with Kenny and Cartman, stretched out under the sun. I was actually starting to like the smell of sunscreen. Cartman barbequed in the afternoon and invited over some girl from Tinder with chunky blonde highlights and a raspy laugh. They disappeared upstairs for along time, and Kenny left to do whatever he does within the legal limit, leaving me to myself. 

What a strange family this is. What a strange life I have.

I sat on the grass, legs outstretched, staring at the violet sky. I wished I had company.

* * *

Tuesday, Craig and I were alone all day together.

Susan sent a group text saying she was calling in because her daughter was sick and needed someone at home to take care of her. She added in “Happy birthday, Kyle :)” at the end. I realized, when I received that text at 6:30 am, that I now had Craig’s number. In retrospect, we should have all had each other’s numbers in case something happened, but we just didn’t get to exchanging digits right away. 

“Looks like it’s just you and me today,” Craig announced, the dust motes and sunshine through the window forming a halo around him. 

“Looks like it,” I said, watching him unlock the door. I wondered what kind of risque things Wendy would say if she had been there.

Almost as soon as I sat at the counter, he laid a book and a king-sized Kit-Kat bar in front of me.  _ Oh, lord,  _ I thought,  _ we have an inside joke. How keen. _

“I know you like ‘em big.” He walked away, hung up his backpack, then walked back over.

“Haha. Thank you.” I did really appreciate the sentiment, though. I held up the book.  _ Light in August _ . Faulkner. “...you didn’t.”

“You said you liked  _ Sound and the Fury _ so I thought maybe you’d like this one too.”

“I actually haven’t read this one yet,” I flipped it open to the inside cover. 

He’d written inside with black ink, semi-cursive:

**To my favorite feisty friend-**

**Happy Birthday**

**♡ Craig**

**5-26-19**

The little heart…

“I’m feisty, huh?” I ran my fingertips over the edges of pages.

“I’d say so.”

“This is really cool, thank you.”

Without realizing the gravity of what I was about to do, I reached out and hugged him. His hand gently scratched my back.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered. “You smell good.”

I pulled away. Like I’ve said before, I am not suave. I could have said something sexy, but instead, I uttered, “Thanks, I showered today.”

I thought he would say nothing, shake his head, and walk away. He laughed. “Same.”

* * *

We sat at the table outside again, quietly eating lunch when I said, “I might be going on vacation soon.”

“Really? Where?”

“Florida.”

“In the middle of summer?” he touched the top of my hand, finger pressing between two knuckles. “You’ll burn.”

“I’ve got a lot of sunscreen. Need to protect all this ink.”

“Just don’t forget the back of your neck again.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t. But yeah, I know it’s weird timing. I’m supposed to go to a wedding.”

“That’s nice. Who’s getting married?”

“A friend of mine. Kind of.”

He rubbed his eye. A cloud shifted and a sting of sun found his face. “A kind of friend?”

“Well. Bebe’s manager.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a vacation to me.”

“I guess not. But she really wants me to go.”

“Do you always just do what she wants?”

“There’s more to it than that, Craig.”

“I know, I know.” He crushed a wrapper and slid it back into his lunchbox. “But it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around. The more you tell me about her, the more I don’t like her.”

“You don’t even know her.”

“Don’t need to. I trust your judgment, but it sounds like you give her more of you than she deserves.”

I had to smile at that. He had a tendency to go on these mini-emotional tirades if something wound him up enough. It tickled, seeing him get on a soapbox for me.

“Maybe. I think I’ll let her have this one last thing and then we’re done.”

“If you say so.”

“It’s for Scott anyway. No big deal.”

“I just don’t think you should do anything that you have bad feelings about.”

“I don’t. More like I’m slightly annoyed. I’ll get over it.”

“Do what you gotta do.” His eyes were glassy. The subject was tired.

“So… your sister seems nice.”

“Oh, god. I’m sorry about that. So awkward.”

“It wasn’t  _ that _ awkward. She was just very… um, forward.”

I waited for him to stop chewing a cracker, then asked: “What did you tell her about me?”

He sucked in his breath. “Oh, nothing.”

“You sure about that?”

“I just told her you’re cool. Smart. Sensible. Way more sensible than other students I’ve worked with. A lot of them are so entitled, you know? They complain about their parents putting them in school. Most of their parents pay for it too. Selfish. There are so many people who want to go to school but can’t because of money, their family or job. These kids should be grateful.”

Damn, he knew how to talk his way from a subject fast. I had a feeling he and Cartman would get along.

“Totally.”

“It was really cool to see your other work. Trish thought so, too.”

“You guys don’t really look alike,” I said, then regretted it. It sounded much ruder spoken out loud than it did in my head.

He didn’t seem offended at all. “Yeah, we get that a lot.”

“I can still tell you’re siblings, though.”

“Oh, I’m sure. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

I bit my lip. “I have a little brother. My family adopted him when he was a baby.” 

I was afraid he’d ask about my change in tone, but he was stuck on the adoption aspect.

“Where was he adopted from?”

“Canada.”

“Oh.” He sipped from his Cola can then watched my face intently. “So you would understand then.”

“Understand what?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can tell me, Craig. I won’t judge.”

He exhaled from his nose. A bird swooped down, started pecking into the grass near us. 

“I was adopted from Arizona. That’s why Tricia and I don’t look alike.”

I said nothing. The comment I made about him and his sister seemed even ruder now and made me feel like an ignorant piece of shit.

Our lunch hour was almost up. 

“Come on,” he said and started cleaning up both of our things.

In the elevator, he continued: “My adoptive parents kept trying to have a baby for years. They decided to give up and adopt me instead, and of course, soon enough ol’ Laura got pregnant with Tricia. You know how it goes.”

We stepped off the elevator, walked down the hallway - a voice in my head, much braver than me, told me to hold his hand. I killed it away.

“I don’t know what I am,” he said as he clocked in.

“Meaning?”

“I’ve never met my birth parents. I’m mixed, but I don’t know with what. My mom says she thinks my birth mother is part Native American, but isn’t sure. They gave almost no information about themselves when they gave me up.”

I clocked in next. “I’m sorry…”

He spoke again before I could flesh out a bumbling apology about how rude I was, how I should know better. 

“What are you?” he asked.

“Like, my ethnicity?”

“Yeah.”

“You can’t just ask people why they’re white, Craig.”

He laughed.

“I’m Hebrew, though. Since you asked so nicely.”

“No shit? I kind of had a feeling. I love Jewish people. They always tell you what they’re thinking, no bullshit.”

I thought of my mom. I hadn’t heard from her in seven years.

Craig stared at me. “Is that racist?”

I shook my head. “If you think  _ that’s _ racist, you should hear the jokes Cartman makes about me.”

“I have no idea how to feel about the people in your life anymore,” he said, frowning.

“Funny.  _ You’re _ in my life.”

* * *

I texted Bebe that I would go to the wedding, but we were going to establish boundaries, and that I would pay my own way. She said okay.

I spent four evenings sitting by my garden and reading  _ Light in August _ . There are two separate characters named Joe, and one isn’t actually a Joe to begin with, so I would get confused sometimes, but overall I was really enjoying it. Any book with misfit characters smudging the lines of the norm always gets to me.

Thinking about what it would be like to be Craig, I suddenly felt lucky to know my history. He had nothing to go off of. He told me he’d thought about doing a DNA test, but it wouldn’t help him find or feel closer to his parents. I told him he should do it anyway, no harm in knowing where you come from, but he didn’t have a response. I didn’t press.

One night, he sent me a chemistry meme as I was eating dinner, and it initiated a lengthy chain of messages going all the way through September.


	10. dahlia (beauty)

“I feel bad for Byron Burch,” I said about a  _ Light in August _ character, one Friday afternoon, after Susan had left for the day. “He’s too shy to tell Lena how he feels about her.”

“She’s pregnant with someone else’s kid, though.”

“I know. But still. I understand how he feels.”

He closed a binder on the table. I watched as he stowed it away on a metal shelf. “Me too. Lots of times I’ve been afraid to speak up when I liked someone.”

“Yeah?” I lose focus on the chart I was filling out. “How often is ‘lots of times’?”

“Okay, maybe not ‘lots of times’,” he said, hunching over the table diagonal from me. “Especially nowadays, it’s not often I like someone. But it doesn’t matter. Who would like me back anyway?”

He knew exactly what he was doing. I broke out in a sweat. This was my chance now. I could shape out what this relationship was. 

I may not be suave, but I am no Byron Burch. 

“Craig, if you wanted to, I would go out with you.”

Big smile. “You mean that?”

“I do.” I smiled back.

“I… wow. I’m glad because I have to admit: I’ve been lowkey crushing on you for the past few weeks.”

“Me too… I thought maybe you liked me, but I wasn’t sure because…” I waved a circle around my face. “Because of this.”

For the first time since I had known him, he looked genuinely sad. His eyebrows furrowed, his shoulders slumped. “You don’t think you’re cute?”

“I have no reason to think that.”

“Well, you haven’t seen how you look when you’re talking about cell division. It’s really cute.”

“Don’t make me blush.”

“You already are,” he looked completely dopey now. “I have to get some stuff out of my office before I go home, want to come with me?”

* * *

Some people think science is boring. They had teachers who told them to analyze facts or memorize the periodic table and be done with it. True science means digging in - probing the soft underbelly of our existence.

Existence was something I thought about a lot during that time. I often felt outside of my body, not controlling anything, watching this broken vessel move from room to room.

When he pulled me into his tiny office on the floor above, I realized what my existence was about to be for someone else. My body, too, would be a part of someone else’s.

He took a minute to download something to a USB from a humming old Dell on the desk, watching me observe everything. Every knick-knack or pad of stationary, I thought, would clue me into more about him. Like me, he had lake stones on a shelf. He also had Pride buttons and little green army men. In the center of the army men was what I can only describe as a mailman action figure, shining of plastic, a scrambled, painted face.

“Is that supposed to be you?” I pointed it out.

“According to my friends, yeah.”

“You still have the uniform?”

“Maybe.”

I zeroed in on the windowsill, flushed with sunlight, tiny succulents, and one singular daisy with a postcard that read  _ to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow! Love, Mom. _

“Adorable,” I whispered.

“Like you.”

“No…”

“This is going to be an ongoing thing with you, isn’t it?”

“You bet.”

“That’s fine. I can go for a long time.”

I looked away from all the meanings he implied and moved on to the next thing. Piles of department pamphlets, employee folders, a few books, one of which was in German. I picked it up.

_ “Nichts ist mehr wert als dieser Tag,” _ he said from behind me.

For a second, I thought he was telling me to put the book down. I twisted back to look at him. He was now up and leaning against the front of his desk.

“Care to translate?”

“ _ Nothing is worth more than this day.  _ It’s the first quote I thought of when I saw you picking up that Goethe. But it’s been in the back of my head whenever I see you, too.”

I put the book down, then stood in front of him, arms crossed.

“What happens now?” I asked. 

“What do you want to happen?”

“A lot of things. I don’t know where to start.”

While I spoke, he quietly put his hands on my hips. I leaned into him, getting closer to his face than ever. He had gotten some sun, and his nose was peeling. Instinctively I reached up and tugged off the dead skin. 

He didn’t even flinch, pulling me in to kiss me. 

Our underbellies, what makes us, us. It didn’t matter, me being an estranged Jew with a criminal record and him an adopted child of mixed descent, or that we were two men kissing. 

Yet, it meant everything.

Everything we were led up to this point, and as he moved his hands up my shirt, I thought of the soft belly of a sheep, amber honey, how no one else has kissed me deeply. 

  
  



	11. lilac (family)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey fam, sorry this chapter is short but work has been kicking my ass :(   
> Love,  
> Kyle, Your Local Garbage Gay

My therapist thinks I’m holding back. 

It seems she wants me to spew everything I’m thinking in some stream-of-conscious style, drive into every cistern of my brain and explore this life without one single speck of word fleeing from the heel of my boot. But I’m not fucking Faulkner. I’m just Kyle. 

What the fuck am I supposed to do here, Dr. T’Soni? Do you want me to admit that I hope he’s unhappy? That I want him to feel bad about hurting me? Good people don’t wish for these things. Good people move on and forgive. I’m not a good person.

Each time I go to that little office with the ceramic Big Bird on the desk, I want to throw the papers in the trash. I want to say that everything that has happened to me isn’t worth discussing anymore. What’s done is done and I’d rather forget it all. But by the time I’ve finished reading, my hands are shaking. If it’s terrifying, then I guess it’s worth saying. 

* * *

Clyde amped me up to sleep with this girl at a party once. She’d been eyeing me all night but I was too shy to speak to her. I didn’t think anything would come of it. After a few shots, Clyde shoved me into her and I was forced to mutter a velvety, alcohol-soaked “hullo.”

She locked us in the master bedroom and after several minutes of her grabbing and grinding me everywhere, me mumbling “hold on a sec,” and her saying something along the lines of “what are you, gay?” when I didn’t want to do something, we stumbled back out to the hallway to smug faces, and Clyde’s whooping, exclaiming I was “officially a man.”

I don’t remember her name, but I can still taste her sweat, the whiskey and apple cider, how into the carpet fell my vomit, and became an  entrée for someone’s dog. 

I haven’t thought about this in years.

The next morning, I woke up surrounded by snoring teenagers. Clyde was in the kitchen, airing out his face in the open fridge.

“Hey,” I said. 

“Kyle,” he pulled himself out and shut the door. “I feel disgusting.”

“Me too.”

“I’m going to need a list of every stupid thing I did last night.”

“You’re on your own with that one. I don’t remember much.”

“Shit.”

“I wouldn’t worry. I doubt what you did was any stupider than what you do when you’re sober.”

“Fuck you, Broflovski.” He opened the freezer compartment. “Ooh, burritos.”

I leaned against the bright red counter. I had no idea whose house this was. Don’t think I cared to. 

“How was it with what’s-her-face?”

“Great,” I lied, though the memory of her reaching into my jeans when I said “no” made me want to vomit again. I pressed the lever on a toaster and two cockroaches crawled out. “Oh, fuck this. I’m going home, Clyde.”

“‘Aight, see ya.”

I made my way to the kitchen door that led into the garage and outside into the mid-morning sun. That party was just one of many parties. Parties with college students and enough cocaine to fill my skull, vodka to keep my chest on fire, and girls who put tabs of LSD under my tongue and kissed me with smoke in their mouths. 

I was too tired to try and climb up into my bedroom window, so I quietly opened the front door, peeked in, saw no one, then walked in and carefully closed it behind me. My father was out on a business trip, and Ike couldn’t care less where I had been, but my mother saw me try and walk past the kitchen.

“Kyle. Help me roll this dough.”

“Ma, I don’t feel well.”

“I know. Help me with this bread or I’ll tell your father you were out drinking.”

I sighed, then wobbled over.

“Wash your hands.”

_ “Ken, ima.” _ Yes, Ma.

She was in the process of rolling and braiding long strands of dough for challah, her hands covered in flour.

I washed all the way up to my elbows and scrubbed under my fingernails before turning to the counter island, facing opposite of Sheila, and started stretching the dough. Challah is tricky sometimes, as is baking any bread, I suppose, but I’ve never got the braiding part quite right. The threads can’t be too thick or too thin, and I always fuck it up.

“You reek,” she said, not looking up. 

“Sorry.”

“Why didn’t you call me when people started drinking?”

“My phone died.”

“No one else had a charger?”

“I don’t remember.”

She lay her hands flat on the counter, still not looking at me. “I was out. Driving around until four in the morning looking for you, Kyle.”

“Sorry,” I repeated.

“You don’t sound sorry at all. You sound like that Clyde kid.”

I said nothing, pinching the ends of my thread. 

“I know you don’t care about anything I have to say anymore, but I’m going to say it anyway: I’m really worried for you,  _ ben. _ People who really care about you will uplift you into a better person. This Clyde… he’s a leech, Kyle. He takes advantage of you and you let him.”

“I’m not doing anything that I don’t want to do,” I said, plopping the dough onto the pan. “You don’t know him how I know him.”

She finally looked up at me. “Every day, I feel like you’re slipping further away from this family. I don’t want to lose my son.”

* * *

“So now what?”

Craig’s hands were still up inside my shirt, holding my sides. He leaned in and kissed my ear, just where my scar ends. 

“What do you mean?” he started in on my neck, stippling a line of tiny kisses. My brain swam, my chest turned to goo. I thought of that girl. Apple sweat. My vomit in the beige carpet. 

“I - just, hold on a sec, Craig.”

Craig pulled away and held my face. “You  _ want _ me to stop kissing you?”

“Of course not. But we should really talk about this.”

“Why? We already said we liked each other.”

“Yeah, but the direction this is heading right now…” I took his hands away and held them in mine. “I like you a lot. But with us working together and everything, I don’t think we should do a one-night stand. I’ve tried before but I always feel like shit afterward and I don’t want that with you. I can’t explain why right now but this feels too special for me to ruin.”

“Who said anything about a one-night stand?”

“Oh. I just assumed…”

“You assumed wrong.” He kissed me again, then rested his forehead against mine. “I mean, I would totally sleep with you right now but that’s not all I want. You’re special to me, too.”

“Guess I was wrong.”

He chuckled, running his fingers up my open palm. “You were half-wrong.”


	12. gladiolus (strength)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so far for your sweet comments <3

You can tell a lot about a person from what they keep in their car. 

My father kept his car lawyerly clean, absolutely no eating or drinking allowed. However, Gerald Broflovski kept a box of cigars covert in the center console, and after winning a big case, would bust one out, cruising down the main roads in a Hybrid filled with smoke. 

On Thursday afternoons, he picked me up from basketball practice. I made decent shots but was never great at defending my position and ended up quitting later that semester.

“I watched you the last half hour, Kyle,” he said as I buckled into the front passenger seat. “You’ve got  _ potential. _ Keep it up and you might get somewhere someday.”

I can’t tell you how much this dazzled me. My father rarely doled out compliments, and though this one was conditional, I ate it right up. Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ, I had  _ potential _ . 

“Here,” he reached into the console and handed me the cigar box and lighter. “You can try one, but don’t you dare tell your mother.”

Before, I had no interest in bumming a cigar from him, but this felt like an initiation. Like, if I didn’t try this, I may as well not have a relationship with my father. We had nothing else in common. This could be the one thing. 

I took a roll in my skinny little fingers and lit. Bringing it to my mouth, I expected hickory or the sweetness of burning, but instead, I got a mouthful of what tasted like cat urine. Mortified, I powered down the window and coughed violently, my father giggling and continuing to drive. I chucked it out the window.

“What the hell are you doing!” He slammed on the brakes. The back of my head thwapped against the seat. “Get out and pick that up. You know how expensive those are?”

I did as I was told. I unlatched my seatbelt and went to open the door, hearing him growl behind me:  _ “what the fuck is wrong with you?” _

Guess what  _ isn’t _ wrong with me, Dad?

I didn’t find cigars in Craig’s car, but an empty, flat box for Marlboro cigarettes sitting in the cupholder.

“It’s not mine,” Craig said, ripping it from my hand. He threw the box into the backseat.

“Is it Tricia’s?”

“Hell no. I’d kick her ass.”

“Then whose is it?”

“Roommate’s.”

Ah, yeah.  _ The Roommate. _ Craig had yet to tell me any more about this person. All I knew is this roommate was an older man (Craig never used any other pronouns besides “he” or “his” for this person), and that he was aggressive. He’d call Craig at random times throughout the workday and scream incoherently, while Craig would just stand there and mumble a multitude of “I knows” “Yeahs” “Okays” while life drained from his face by the teaspoon. I wanted to punch this man. But Craig never seemed to want to discuss it, and I didn’t push, like how he wouldn’t push me to tell my secrets. 

Last time I was in Craig’s car, I was too distracted by my own nervousness and wetness to look around. Now that we’d spent the better part of 40 minutes kissing (my lips were dry and pulsing) and touching, him marking me in ways that no one will ever see, I found it in my right to explore.

Silver dog tags hung from the rearview mirror. My fingers traced the length of the chain, then stopped at the identification engraving: STRIPE.

“Did you have a dog?” I asked.

“No,” he said, putting on his turn signal to leave the parking lot. “I had a guinea pig named Stripe when I was a kid. My mom had that made for me after he died.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

“I’ve had friends with cats and dogs, but never anything other than that. What’s having a guinea pig like?”

A sweet smile spread over his face. I had a feeling he didn’t get to talk about Stripe often. “Generally, guinea pigs are bit skittish when you first bring them home, but Stripe and I bonded right away. He was so friendly. So friendly, in fact, that he was always getting out his cage to go make more friends.”

“Oh?” We passed a suburb with an ice cream truck poking out, a herd of children chasing it.

“Yeah, guinea pigs aren’t usually escape artists, but for some reason, Stripe was always getting out and I’d spend hours in the basement looking for him. Little fucker. I miss him.”

“That’s really cute,” I said, shifting my feet over a layer of fast food wrappers and empty milkshake cups. 

“You said you had friends with pets. You never had any of your own?”

“No, but I adopted a giraffe through a wilderness conservation program. Does that count?”

“I don’t see why not,” he rolled down his window a bit and his shaggy black hair flew back. “So... what, is it like child support payments or something?”

“Yeah, Giraffe Support,” I said, thinking  _ if I saved up these Giraffe Support payments I could probably afford therapy. But then I would feel bad…  _ “They send me a postcard every month with a picture of him. His name is Kalimbo but I call him High Balls.”

“ _ Please _ show me the pictures of High Balls someday.”

“I will,” I laughed as we turned onto the street that would eventually trail to my house. Looking down into the pocket of the passenger door, I noticed a few CDs:  _ Good Girl Gone Bad _ by Rihanna. Iconic.  _ Black Moses _ by Issac Hayes. Fucking classic.  _ Hybrid Theory, _ Linkin Park. The case was cracked. He must have had this one for years. The  _ Trainspotting _ soundtrack… I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have this one too. 

A yellow album stuck out to me. I couldn’t make out what the spine text said, so I pulled it out.

“You have… the _SpongeBob SquarePants_ _Movie_ soundtrack?”

“Hell yeah, I do. It’s a good album!”

“If you say so.”

“The Flaming Lips are on it!”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Oh Kyle, you’re breaking my heart.”

Funny, he would be the one to break mine.

I opened it up. There was a faded ticket stub for the movie itself, dated November 20, 2004, wedged in one of those inside plastic nodes.

“What’s the story behind this?” I asked him.

He quickly glanced at it, then back at the road. “Okay, picture it: November 19, 2004. I was in junior high on a merit trip-”

“-what the hell is a  _ merit _ trip?”

“It’s like a field trip, but not educational.”

“Could have called it a field trip either way.”

“Don’t tease me. Anyway, so, November 19th is when the  _ SpongeBob _ movie came out. Our merit trip was to the theater, and I was pissed because it literally would have the perfect day to go see it, but we saw a different movie instead.”

“What was it?”

“ _ The Polar Express.” _

“That movie is sweet, though.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to see a Christmas movie before it was even Thanksgiving, you feel?”

“Not really. You know how I feel about  **time** . Besides, the only Jew representation I get is  _ Eight Crazy Nights. _ ”

“Oh… yeah, I suppose you’re right. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don’t really celebrate Hannukah anymore anyway.”

“Why not-”

I cut him off. “So I’m guessing your parents took you to see it the next day. No offense Craig, but that story makes you sound like a spoiled brat.”

“Maybe I was sometimes.” 

My house was beginning to come into view.

“My mom took me,” he said. “It may have happened because of bratty reasons, but it was one of the best days of my life.”

I remembered the daisy in his office. “You’re really close to your mom, aren’t you?”

“My life would be very different, probably for the worse, if it weren’t for her.”

I slipped the CD back into the door pocket. “I miss going on field trips.”

“Me too.”

“In elementary school, there was a field trip to a music hall or something, I don’t remember, but my class was so small that instead of using a bus, they had parents and a couple of teachers carpooling with students. My mom was terrified that one of the parents was secretly corrupt and might sell me to the black market, so she refused to sign the permission slip and I had to stay behind and do classwork.”

“...you’re joking.”

“I’m totally serious.”

“Overprotective much?”

“She could be.”

“Well, she can’t protect you now.” He put a hand on my thigh. “Not from me.”

True. She couldn’t protect me now, and she couldn’t protect me when I crawled into that ‘78 Cobra Mustang, couldn’t protect me when Clyde had a switchblade to my throat, couldn’t protect me as I was begging for my life. And who knows? Now that I’m older I could picture the situation my mother described. 

We parked in the street out front. I squeezed his hand, still thinking of the evils that happen in broad daylight, but smiled nonetheless. 

“So,” he said.

“So,” I said.

He was a teenager all of a sudden, embers in his cheeks, opening and closing his mouth to speak, rolling his eyes at himself. 

“What is it?” I asked him.

“It’s too soon.”

“For what?”

“Nothing.”

“Just tell me what you’re thinking, please. You’re making me nervous.”

“It’s stupid.”

“Doubt.” I squeezed his hand again. 

God, I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to tell him how much his affection meant to me, how I adored our conversations, how I lusted for those glances at each other across the lab. We had  _ potential _ . I wish I could tell him these things now. 

But I won’t.

Those secrets will never leak from these pages. Not from my mouth.

“Sometimes the Phoenix Theater has retro movie nights, and tomorrow they’re showing  _ Blade Runner. _ I was going to go by myself, but if you’re not busy…”

“I’d love to go.” 

“Really?”

“Of course.” I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “So, wait, you’re totally chill tonguing me down in your office but you’re nervous to ask me on a date?”

“Hm. Guess I got that a bit backward, huh?”

“Just a tad.”

“Sorry, I’ve been wanting to kiss you for a long time. I still do.”

“Prove it.”

* * *

I stumbled into the shop, patting down my hair, straightening my shirt. Thank fuck, no one was hanging out in the waiting area anyway. 

In fact, Stan and Cartman were gone, their cubicles deserted. That time of year was slow, and I figured it was just one of those nights. The only sound was a soft buzzing from Kenny’s space. Poor dude. The apprentice usually gets put on walk-in duty.

I ambled over and knocked on the wall.

He was curled up in the chair, tattooing a skull right above his knee.

“Ken, what the fuck?”

He glanced up at me, sweat beads clinging to his forehead like giant crystal apricots, then went back shading.

“She said I wasn’t gentle enough,” he said. “She kept saying that I was hurting her. She cried, Kyle.”

“Tattoos hurt. She had to know what she was getting into.”

“Still. I wanted to practice being soft.”

I leaned against the archway and watched him grimace for a few minutes. 

I love Kenny’s nook. It reminds me of some hole in the wall game store, with a shelf of Nintendo and anime figurines that are probably worth more than my organs. The Keyblade is hoisted above everything, the crown of a shrine. Below is a signed photo of Kenny meeting Mark Meer at a convention, with the caption “We’ll bang, okay?” And posters of  _ Kingdom Hearts, Akira, Final Fantasy, Fooly Cooly, and Bungo Stray Dogs. _ He always has incense burning too, and crystals arranged in different daily patterns.

“Can I ask you something a little weird? There’s no such thing as iHop Customer Confidentiality, right?”

He laughed a little, winced, then said: “Ask away.”

“So… the guy from my work.”

“The asshole? Are you guys fucking yet?”

“We’re getting there.”

“I knew it… Go on.”

“Apparently, he had you as a waiter once and you weirded him out. Do you remember him?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific. What’s his full name? I look at people’s credit cards.”

“Wow, that’s… uh, his name is Craig Tucker.”

“Oh, that dude!” He pulled the tattoo gun away, cocked his head, dipped for ink, then went back in. “I  _ do  _ remember him. He has, like, four credit cards by the way. So don’t marry him or anything.”

“Don’t worry about that, no one is ever going to marry me.”

“Someone will. I think you’d be a good husband.”

“I’m sure Bebe would disagree.”

“Who cares what she thinks,” he squinted at his work again. “So, your dude got weirded out by me, eh?”

“Yeah, he said he was with a friend and you were moaning about the specials or something.”

He lifted the needle out of his skin one last time, then looked to me. “A friend? Every time I see him, he’s alone.”

I frowned. Craig lied to me?

Things were starting to line up in a way I didn’t like. He never mentioned his friends by name how I mention Wendy, Cartman, Stan, Kenny. Everything he does seems to be done alone: movies, restaurants… The only people he had specifically mentioned were his mother and sister.

“What do you think?” Kenny asked, beginning to clean up his station. I walked closer. 

“It looks really good. How do you feel?”

“I feel okay.”

“Good. You really had nothing to worry about.”

I continued staring at the skull on his leg. I think Kenny could tell what I was thinking.

“Maybe Craig didn’t tell you the truth because he didn’t want you to think he’s lame.”

“I guess. Though I don’t think being alone is lame at all. Why lie?”

“He doesn’t know you think that way. At least, not yet.” Kenny discarded the needle. “He’s probably super careful about the people he lets into his life. Kind of like you.”

_ I have concerns about the people in your life _ , I heard his voice in my head. I get it. I can be anti-social too, but I’ve never truly gone through anything alone either.

Suddenly this wave of contentment washed over me. I couldn’t explain why, but I loved this moment, still feeling warm hands on my waist, warmth on my mouth, and this night of nights with everything quiet except for that soft buzz and a conversation between two friends. I wanted to remember it forever.

“Wait, Ken, do me.” I extended my left palm out to him.

“Huh?”

“Practice being gentle on me. You can do something small.”

“Where?”

“My palm.”

“Your palm! Are you fucking nuts?”

“I have a criminal record that says I am.”

Kenny shook his head. “That’s going to hurt like a mother fucker.”

“That’s why it’s the ultimate test of gentleness.”

“It won’t matter how gentle I am,” he said, then took my hand and pinched the very center of my palm.

“Ow!”

“See? I barely pinched you.”

“It can be small. What about a heart?”

He rolled his eyes, then ran his thumbs over the pads of my fingers. “I can’t do an anatomical one. That would be too much. It would have to be simple.”

“That’s all I want.”

He studied my palm more as if he were about to read my fortune, then pointed to the bottom third of my ring finger. “How about I put it here instead? That way it’s over the vein the leads to your heart.”

“I like that.”

“Good, because that’s what you’re getting.”

He cleaned up, took a quick break, then set up everything again. I realized just as the needle curved into my skin that I hadn’t eaten or drank anything in hours and my blood sugar crashed. My prediction was right. It was a temporary discomfort, but as soon as Kenny lined the tail of the heart, there was static in my ears and everything went black. 


	13. bryony (be my support)

I have only twice donated blood.

The first time, they sucked a full bag out of me. I passed out as soon as I stood up. My head filled with complete blackness, then I woke up to a nurse. It lasted but a few seconds.

The second time, I laid quiet on the gurney, in the gym of the Boulder YMCA. Head twisted around to stare at the blue plastic risers, the basketball hoopers, the painted lines of the floor, random banners - I wanted to look at anything other than the tube lodged into my arm. Obviously I’m not afraid of needles, but, blood work in unnerving, especially when you’ve seen someone lose so much of it. I thought donating would help make me feel better about things I wish I hadn’t seen.

The nurse walked up. She said: “Looks like we won’t get much out of you,” so I turned my face and saw her cracked, yellowing fingernail pointing to the tube. Thin blood squelched up into a meager bag. She snapped on gloves, disconnected the needle, then helped me up. When she sat me down at the snack table, I asked her if the blood was usable. She said no.

I woke up to Kenny wafting ammonia smelling salts under my nose. That last time I passed out, I saw nothing. This time was different.

This time, a dream came.

I was paddling along a purple river in a small canoe. A cobra perked up on the bank, glaring at me. I drew my oar in, hoping not to tempt it, but the bastard slithered into the water and under my canoe. That’s when Kenny woke me up.

“Hey, you’re finally awake.”

I couldn’t speak at first, still terrified the cobra was plotting to unhinge its jaw and swallow me whole.

“You scared me.” He had now put down the salts and was pressing a cold cloth on my forehead. “I’ve never had anyone pass out on me.”

“Oh.” I tried to sit up but my brain was swimming. “Oh, I’m so happy to be your first.”

He patted my hair. “Don’t get up. I’ll get you a pop.”

Kenny disappeared and I could hear him ravaging the mini-fridge by reception. I wiped cold sweat from my upper lip with my shirt collar, then looked at the fresh ink.

It was only the black outline of a tiny, gushing heart, but I loved it. Anything empty is open to possibility. To potential.

* * *

“Craig” and “first date.” Do those words even belong in the same cavern of thought? Wondering about it elicited twisting waves of disbelief in my stomach. _Really, Kyle?_ _The guy that swatted your hand away on the first day of work? You’re going to go out with him?_

It felt as if a giant, invisible hand had reached down, plucked me into the sky, and plopped me into an alternate universe. Hell, the way Craig switched his attitude so fast made me think he is his own entity of multiple universes. I know I’ve said before that he was a storm.

Is he storms or universes?

I suppose both. He is  _ human _ , after all.

“Guess who just passed out?” I texted him as soon as Kenny sent me off into my room.

“Oh fuck, are you cereal? You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m gucci.”

“Good. Why did you pass out though?”

I sent him a photo of my heart. 

He replied: “CUTE. How much did that hurt?”

“‘Twas only a temporary discomfort but I passed out due to this phenomenon called ‘not eating’. My fault.”

“I should have taken you to dinner or something. I feel bad now.”

“Don’t! I wasn’t even thinking that. But…” Now was my chance to slip the hint that I wanted to spend more time with him. “I’d like to take you somewhere tomorrow. Either before or after the movie. Up to you.”

Craig didn’t reply for a few minutes, so I laid on my bed, fiddling with bird bones. I didn’t want to, but I thought about Bebe. I guess we really aren’t just our thoughts.

I wondered if she was okay, what she was doing right then. Probably streaming.

I went to my desk, opened the laptop, and logged into Twitch.

Sure enough, she was playing  _ Bloodborne _ , legs crossed in a fuzzy purple gaming chair. The chat log rolled slowly, and surprisingly un-creepy. All the comments were game-related. Good, the moderators were doing their job. 

I chipped in a few dollars. Her eyes widened when she saw my username,  _ ChallahAtYaBoi _ , dance across the screen with the donation amount. She smiled.

“Thanks, Kyle. I hope you’re alright.” She said this as if I were out fighting in a war.

Then, a text from Craig: “You could literally murder me, leave my body in a ditch, and I’d be okay with it.”

I froze, staring at the words from my soon-to-be-boyfriend in front of my ex-girlfriend. Whatever she was saying became warbles of unheard words behind the phone screen. I texted Craig back, “I feel the same about you… but at the same time, please don’t murder me? I’m going to bed now so I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

“Okay, good night :)”

“Night :D”

I put the phone on my desk, entered a smiley face into Bebe’s chat, then closed the laptop. As I curled into bed, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. The idea that what I was doing was actually cheating waved in. Acid slithered up my throat.

It hadn’t really sunk in. I had to remind myself that Bebe and I weren’t together. Should I not be talking to Bebe anymore? 

Stupid question. I’m an adult. I can talk to whoever the hell I want.

We would have to talk anyway for this Florida trip. I hoped we would be able to get through this wedding without fighting. My heart of hearts, which I really think is just my stomach, said no.

* * *

I remember waking up to Cartman’s burly stomps from his room, past my bedroom door with a burp, then fade away to the (almost always trashed) kitchen. His stomps always bugged me, but it can’t be helped. Some people’s whole personality sets in their steps. I mean, I walk pretty fast, pretty frantic. Cartman is just fucking loud. When he’s reincarnated for the next life, if there is such a thing, he’ll make an excellent rooster. Moreover, he’s an absolute cock.

He was like this in juvie too. We shared a bunk bed, me on top, him on the bottom (mind out of the gutter please) in our cell. Sometimes I wished I was in maximum security because those kids had their own cells. Which, by the way, the counselors advised us against calling it our “cell.” “Dorm” was the preferred term. Whatever. I have yet to see a dormitory built of cinderblocks, vacant of windows. Sugar-coating language pisses me off. A cell is a cell. What I did was wrong. What Cartman did was wrong. We deserved to be in that cell. Now he’s less likely to commit arson and defecate in public places in broad daylight. And I don’t do rails of crack and steal cars anymore. Progress.

We had a mandatory wake-up time every morning. Soon, our bodies biology formed around it and woke u up naturally. But for the first few weeks, I tried to stay in bed because I wanted to sleep my sentence away, but Cartman’s stomping and shrill voice ensured that wasn’t a possibility. He’d reach up over the metal frame and slap the top of my head until I got up. My pissiness in the morning delighted him, like how a child suddenly becomes a galloping, clapping horse when their parent finally concedes to letting them have that second bowl of ice cream. He finally stopped after I snatched his thick wrist one morning and bent it so hard it almost broke. I wouldn’t recommend myself to ever be a parent.

With the melody of pots and pans clattering in the kitchen and the drone of our neighbor’s lawnmower, I laid there trying to remember my dreams, but nothing came to mind. All I could think of was the snake that swam under me while I was passed out in Kenny’s chair. I should have told him. He would have known what it meant.

I rolled out of bed, left to take a piss, then came back to my phone lighting up with a message.

Craig: “What time should I pick you up?”

“Soon-ish. I just woke up.”

“Okay, just let me know. I’ll come for you.”

“I would hope so :P”

“Phrasing?”

“Oh hell yeah.”

* * *

I ambled out to the kitchen where Cartman, already dressed for a day of artfully stabbing people, was whistling and pouring coffee. Eggs popped in a pan. I thought of asking him to cook them on the sidewalk instead. 

When he saw me, he changed his whistle to a bridal march, then sang: “Here comes the Jew, wonder which guy he blew…”

I broke past him to open the cabinet, grab a glass, and fill it with tap water. “You’re quite fucking chipper this morning,” I said.

“I’m in love.”

“With what? The family bucket from KFC?”

“I mean it!” he said, agitating the eggs with a spatula. The yoke ripped and yellow seeped out. “God damn it.” He held the spatula sideways like a barrier so the yolk would stop spreading and cook into an even glacier.

“Are you talking about the girl you brought over for Memorial Day?”

“No, fuck that bitch.”

“Wow. What happened?”

“Turns out she’s a stripper.”

“So?”

He rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, with your girl being a Twitch thot and all.”

“Don’t you dare say that.”

“But it’s true!”

“If you call her a thot again, I’ll punch all your teeth in.”

“Okay, Prison Kyle. Remember you’re back in the real world.” He waved me off. “Anyway, it wasn’t even really about her being a stripper. We’ve been to strip clubs, we know what happens, it’s not all that bad. But she kept acting like she was better than me because of it. Like, cool, you shave your pussy professionally. Who cares?”

I leaned against the refrigerator and watched his face as he contemplated how to ask the question he was about to ask.

“Does Bebe shave?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“It’s just, she had that thing a couple years ago where she wasn’t shaving her armpits, and-”

“-it was for charity. Nothing to do with anything.”

“Just curious.” He shrugged.

“Well, kill your curiosity, please.”

“Damn, okay. Anyway, yeah. She was bragging like ‘oh, so many guys send me dick pics. So many guys want to fuck me,’ so I was like, ‘so why fuck  _ me _ ? Go fuck them, and I’ll fuck off’.” He was talking with his hands quite a bit at this point. “I’ll never understand bragging about how much  _ other _ people want to fuck you if we’re trying to fuck”

“Maybe it works for some people,” I said. “Like she wanted you to tell her those other dudes can’t fuck her as well as you can.”

“I’m not a god damn mind reader, how am I supposed to know that?”

“Eh.”

“Would that tactic work on you?”

“Not really,” I admitted. I thought of how I would feel if Craig told me he had a line of guys waiting to fist or be fisted, I might react the same way Cartman did. “I guess it doesn’t matter now, though.”

“Damn straight.”

I filled my glass again, then sat down at the breakfast bar. “So, tell me about this new chick.”

“She looks like Kelly Clarkson.” He slipped his eggs onto a plate and sat next to me.

“Uh. That last girl kind of looked like Kelly Clarkson, too. Seems like you have a type.”

“What can I say? I like the thicc Greek girls.”

Kenny emerged from his room, smelling of cucumber hair gel and wearing a shirt with flames on it that was two sizes too big for him. “Did someone say thicc Greek girls?”

“Apparently, Cartman’s new girl looks like Kelly Clarkson.”

“Show us.” Kenny slid in next to Cartman.

Cartman wielded his phone, brought up her Tinder profile. What he showed us, yes, was a beautiful girl who resembled  _ American Idol’s _ first winner, but the photo…

“This is a mugshot!” I screeched. “She’s using a mugshot as her profile picture! Even  _ you _ wouldn’t do that!”

“I like her honesty. She’s, like, totally upfront with everything. We were up all night talking.”

Kenny asked: “What was she arrested for?”

“Stealing a boat. Child’s play.”

“Stealing things that big is kind of hard,” I said.

“Well, you would know.”

“Considering I almost died in the process, yes.”

Both of them went silent for a moment.

“Sorry,” Cartman muttered.

“It’s okay.”

“Hey.” Kenny reached behind and around Cartman for my hand. “How’s the tattoo?”

I held up my fingers for him to see. “Good.”

“Worth passing out for?”

“You bet.”

“Let me see.” Cartman snatched my wrist, grinding the bones together. “A heart? Why?”

I shrugged. Hard to explain that wanting for the sake of wanting.

* * *

It was predicted to be a hot fucking day, so I walked out barefoot, still in pajamas, and watered my flowers so they wouldn’t shrivel into brown paper foliage. Gardening can give some anxiety, too. After planting the seeds, the world chooses whether it wants to work with you or not. It’s all totally out of our control. Though I’ve tried to plant in soil not yet completely defrosted, and the blame deeply shifted to me.

* * *

I texted Craig that I was about to hop in the shower and he was welcome to head over anytime.

My beard was growing into scratchy, discombobulated patches, so I showered and quickly scoured myself, then went back to the bedroom to realize I had no clean clothes, not really. My closet was a mess at the time, with the transition from winter clothes to summer clothes at a standstill. All of my boxers were in a dirty basket and I panicked, thinking I was going to have free-ball this date, or at least make Craig wait so I could run a cycle, but that would take another hour at the least. If I chafe, I chafe. 

I dug into the top drawer: black socks, white socks, photo of me and Bebe at the aquarium, a half-finished manuscript of a sci-fi novel I tried to write (don’t judge me, turns out I don’t have the stomach to write a story about humans draining all the water and resorting to drinking blood… and urine), old phone bill statements, an extra house key, fleshlight, flashlight, YMCA ID card, an Enya CD… fuck. Emergency boxer briefs. The dryer had torn it to tatters. In the trash is where they belonged, but from the contents of my drawer, you can gather I’m a pack-rat. Or I just forget these things are still there. 

I whipped off the towel and pulled on the boxer briefs, grimacing as air hit my right ass cheek. Twisting around, I saw only bits of fabric keeping my cheek from hanging completely out. Oh well, it’ll have to do. It’s not like anyone will see. And I doubted things would happen below the belt tonight. If it did, there was no way tattered boxers would ruin the mood, anyway.

The rest of my clothes were in a pile in the corner of the closet, floating in a purgatory of clean and dirty because I couldn’t remember how often I’d worn them. I searched until I found a pair of camouflage shorts with a ketchup stain on the belt loop and a very old, very faded Blink-182 tee-shirt. There were light sweat stains in the pits so I did a quick sniff test. Not great. Not horrible, either. I sprayed it with Axe and pulled it over my head. 

* * *

Craig’s voice wafted from the waiting area:

“I’m here for Kyle.”

Then Stan said something I couldn’t make out because my ankle twisted on the last step of the spiral staircase. I caught myself on the railing, hoping no one saw. Kenny poked his head out from his cubicle.

“You alright, fam?”

“Fine.” I leaned and rolled my ankle a few times until I was satisfied with the number of cracks (by the way, no ever tells you that after 24, you need Ibuprofen pretty much every day and your joints just fucking crack all the time).

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I only tripped.”

“Oh, so you hear you man’s voice and fall down the stairs? That’s so cute.”

“I didn’t fall because of him.”

“Sure, Jan.” Kenny retreated back into his space like a troll slinking back under a bridge.

I shook it off, kissed the buck snout with two fingers, and walked on. Cartman was watching a video on his phone and didn’t notice me walk by. I went up, stood by the front desk where Stan was going over an illustration with a client.

“There he is,” Stan announced.

“There I am.”

“Your Craig is here.”

I wanted to say he’s not My Craig. At least, not yet. Though, truly, he would never be My Anything. You can never claim a person for yourself, anyway. 

Stan continued, “And he brought you coffee.”

Indeed, Craig sat next to two cups on a nightstand fiddling with sunglasses, wearing a turquoise tank top that made his eyes look brighter, and his dark hair in uncombed glory, smiling up at me.

“Sounds like a keeper,” the client commented, which I assumed she felt the need to say something since I was standing there, staring at him like a dumbass and saying nothing.

Craig stood up. “I hope he keeps me.”

We kept staring at each other. 

Even when Stan took his client back, he awkwardly sidled around me, but still managed to whisper: “Nice job, he’s hot.” I think Craig pretended not to hear, though he turned a shade darker.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” I said.

I came out from behind the desk and hugged him. He tried to kiss me but I put a hand on his chest.

“Not here. They’ll hear us,” I whispered.

“What, the room full of taxidermied animal heads isn’t romantic to you?” he whispered back.

I laughed. “Yeah, no…”

“Just… why?

“That’s the aesthetic.”

“It’s a little creepy.”

“Wouldn’t it be weird if the animals were the tattooers, and they had human heads on the wall instead?”

“...what?”

“What?”

He pressed the back of his hand onto my forehead. “Ah, you feel normal. I thought you might have a fever for a second there.”

I pushed his hand away but kept it clasped in mine. “You’re so weird.

“ _ You’re _ weird.” He flattened out my fingers to look at the tattoo. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s a little sore.”

“I’d like to leave you a little sore-”

The ice cream truck languidly drove by. Cartman barrelled past us and out the door, almost pushing us into a navel piercing display.

Craig stared after him, partially in awe, partially in disbelief. “That was Cartman, I assume.”

“Dead on.”

We left, coffees cupped in our hands, mine nice and bitter (like me). I noticed he cleaned the trash out of his car. 

“You didn’t have to clean up, I’ve already seen your filth,” I said as we drove into the street, passing by Cartman running back to the shop, an arm full of Fudgesicles. He motioned like he was going to throw one at us.

“I should have cleaned up a long time ago, to be honest.”

* * *

I asked him to stop at this small park a few miles south of the theater. There are no swings or playscapes - only a few memorial plaques to Vietnam veterans.

“That one is Stan’s grandpa,” I pointed to the Marsh square. “Stan said he tried to ask him about the things he saw before he died, but he couldn’t get the words out. He passed away right around the time Stan turned 17, I think. Stan thinks that maybe his grandpa did some things he was too ashamed to talk about.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. It might have just been too painful to tell.”

We glossed over the handful of other engraved names with long blades of grass curling around them.

“I guess it’s better not to know some things. I don’t know what I would have done if… you know.”

“If you got drafted? Not a lot of choice about what you can do after that.”

“Yeah.”

“Good news is, we don’t have to think about it.”

“Then let’s not,” I said, taking his hand. “This isn’t even what I wanted to show you.”

I brought him out to a line of trees, where a blackbird swooped down and beat her wings at us, bawling for us to get away from her nest. We walked to a small stream. A tiny, stone-encrusted waterfall poured sweetly over a zipping cluster of minnows. Flat stone slabs lined the edges of the water.

We sat together on a stone and stretched our legs out. The stone was hot and I couldn’t set my hands on it, so I folded them in my lap instead.

“The shop gets really loud sometimes. Even being out in the backyard doesn’t always help because the neighbors are loud too. Sometimes, even my thoughts are too loud, so I ride my bike out here. Listen to music, read, whatever. I stay until it gets dark.”

Craig stared down into the minnows. “I can imagine this would be a nice place to be for that.”

“Do you have a place?”

He gave me a cool stare. “A place?”

“Yeah, like a quiet place to go to when things are too loud… or too much.”

“I like being in the lab. I like being with you in there.”

“Nothing that’s just for yourself?”

“I don’t really have time to be in a place like this. Everyone needs something from me.”

Another bird hopped along the bank, twitching, eyeing the twigs and minnows that floated past its wiry feet. 

“Who’s  _ everyone _ ?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve got the president calling you at 3 am.”

“If the president ever called me, I’d hang up on him and set my phone on fire. Fucking Cheeto Voldemort. You know the electronic voting machines were hacked, right?”

“I know.”

“And no one cares!”

“I care, Craig.”

He eyed me with that cool stare again. “I wish more people were like you. I wish more people cared.”

“My grandma, my  _ savta, _ always used to tell me that for every bad person in the world, there are two more good people around the corner. You’re definitely one of those good people.”

A little smile at this. “You’re hanging around the corner with me, right?”

“Of course.” I put a hand on his knee. I wanted to ask him more. Where else does he go when his roommate is being an ass… which seems to be all the time? I wanted to ask about the roommate, too. Who the hell is this guy? But I didn’t want the conversation to turn onto Sour Boulevard. “One time, Cartman and I drove out here when it was super cold, and the water was frozen mid-fall. It was so cool.”

Craig said nothing about the frozen water but stayed stuck in this specific, confused look that recently started popping up when I talked about Cartman.

“What’s the deal with you two, anyway? I don’t get it. You seem to hate each other but you’re… friends?”

“What are you getting at?”

“You make it sound like you’re stuck together.”

“I mean, we’re not. Not really. Either of us could leave anytime.”

“Is he your ex?”

I made a sound like an opossum inhaling a golf ball, then laughed. Hard.

Craig laughed too. “I guess that’s my answer.”

When I finally stopped giggling, I inhaled deeply, letting the water babbles lull me back into reality.

“No, not my ex by a longshot. He hasn’t had the pleasure. We’ve been friends since…” What should I say? We boarded in the same “dorm” together? “We met in high school.”

“Oh.”

“Are you… no. You’re not jealous, are you?”

“The fuck, no?”

“You look a little jealous, babe.”

He sucked in his breath, then smiled. “Babe…” he repeated, then glanced at the water again. “Fine. Maybe I am.”

It was cute. But not necessary.

“You have no reason to worry. Or be jealous,” I told him. “Cartman and I are only friends and it’ll stay that way. Unless I kill him. Or he kills me.”

Craig shook his head. “I’m not jealous in that way. I’m jealous because I wish I could have known you for that long, too.”

“It might be for the best. I’ve been through a lot the past few years. There are things that… Look, I’m not always the easiest person to be around. I have a lot of panic attacks. Night terrors. Sometimes I scream. I hope that doesn’t scare you off.”

He chewed on his lip and looked into my eyes. Usually, direct eye contact chills me, but his eyes were so, so nice to look at. “That doesn’t scare me. It makes me sad that you have to go through that, though.”

“I’m getting better, I think. It used to be a lot worse.”

“I’m glad.” He patted my hand. “I’m difficult to be around too, sometimes, so I guess I understand a bit. I’ve never been great with people.”

“But you have friends. And Dr. Vince obviously adores you.”

“I do, but everyone lives so far out now. And Dr. Vince loves all her students, you know that.”

“We must be the two favorites.”

“We’ll see about that by the end of the summer. Surely, she’ll get sick of us.”

“Bet.” I thought of my conversation with Kenny, how Craig seemed to be alone in everything, and even further, lied about it. “But still, I can’t say I blame you. Having good social skills is a fucking art form these days.”

“That doesn’t excuse - well, you thought I was an asshole at first.”

“Because you were being an asshole. You barely shook my hand.”

“I’m still really sorry about that. I was nervous. And I thought you were going to be some random stoner in the lab, but I also thought you were cute, which made me more nervous.”

“Oh, really? What did you think when you saw me?”

_ “Oh, fuck.” _

“I thought that too.”

“I could kind of tell. You don’t have a very good poker face.”

“I don’t have a good face at all.”

“Stop.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek and… I don’t know. My chest was warm. I could really feel my heart beating. That’s all I can say.

But I couldn’t sit anymore without asking: “Why did you lie to me?”

“Huh? About what?”

“About meeting Kenny at iHop. You said you were with a friend. Kenny says you were alone.”

“I… I’m sorry. I  _ did _ invite one of my friends, but she canceled last minute.”

“You could have told me that to begin with.”

“I didn’t want you to think I was a total loner. And you’re always talking about your friends, and I didn’t want you to think that the only person I hang out with is my sister.”

Admittedly, this was the first and last time Craig would ever lie to me. Withhold information, yes, he’d be doing a lot of that, and so would I. But it was such a small lie, and I was falling so hard for him that I let it go instantly. His reasoning was more than good enough.

“I just want you to be yourself with me, Craig. I don’t care if you think you’re a loser. ‘Cause I really like you. A lot.”

“I like you a lot, too.” He smiled.

“No more lying.”

“I promise. Here,” he outstretched his hand. “I’ll even shake on it.”

I took his hand. He shook it briefly, then pulled me into a kiss. Sneaky bastard.

* * *

I don’t know what reaction Craig was expecting from my first viewing of  _ Blade Runner _ . I knew it wasn’t the same as the book, so I kept an open mind. He kept glancing to see my face during key scenes. The one girl, Pris, with the black make-up across her eyes, reminded me of PeeBee from  _ Mass Effect: Andromeda _ and it bothered the shit out of me, though I know the tribute is supposed to be the other way around.

Still, I let him steal popcorn from my lap and thought about how lucky I felt to be there, at that moment.

* * *

“Did you like it?” he asked as we walked around this outdoor mall complex by the Phoenix Theater, hand-in-hand. 

“Y-Yeah,” I said, not looking at him.

“Don’t be a Fake Franny. I won’t take it personally if you didn’t like it.”

“I need time to digest it. I liked the aesthetic, though!”

“Oh, like you how you like the aesthetic of stuffed woodland critters?”

“That’s not even the worst of it. One time this lady gave us a voodoo doll head in a jar.”

“Woooowww, what a thoughtful gift.”

“She must have noticed the jar of baby doll limbs Stan keeps in his cubicle.”

“So it’s Halloween all the fucking time for you guys.”

“Every day is a fucking nightmare, so yes.”

* * *

As the sun began to lower, we found ourselves at Tony’s. If there is a God, I hope They heard my silent prayer that the cashier wouldn’t recognize me and ask about Bebe. She didn’t. Then I remembered that  _ I’m _ a cashier, I don’t give a shit about anything, and neither do most cashiers. 

“So, when did you figure out you were queer?” he asked me after lodging a spoon into a triple-decker melted fudge nightmare. He was already almost done.

Elvis watched over us, almost judgementally. If he could speak through the photo, I would imagine he’d call us gross. At least Craig and I weren’t writing songs about kissing our cousins and fucking 13-year olds. 

“It’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but I’m pretty sure it started when my parents hired a tutor for me and I couldn’t stop staring at him for some reason. Like, the same way I stared at girls. Nothing ever came of it though, he was a bit older. What about you?”

“This is going to sound weird, but I’ve kind of known since fourth grade. And everyone else seemed to be betting on it, too. When I came out to my parents, they weren’t surprised at all.”

I gripped my waffle cone. “I’m glad your parents were okay with it. Mine still don’t know. Well, I mean, they  _ might _ have guessed. But I’ve never officially come out to them.”

“Are they homophobic or something?”

“Not really. I just haven’t talked to them in so long, it seems kind of stupid to tell them now.”

“When was the last time you talked to them?”

“It’s been years.”

He searched my face. I gazed over at Marilyn Monroe’s painted crossed eyes.

“Why, Kyle?”

“This isn’t a first date discussion,” I said, a bit too harshly. 

He jolted, cocked his head back, blinking hard. “What’s the matter with you?”

At least that’s better than  _ what the fuck is wrong with you? _

“Everything.”

I don’t know what came over me. My heart rate sped up and a lump formed in my throat. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe and fuck… it felt like everyone was staring at me. Was I freaking out? I don’t remember. I was probably fucking freaking out.

“Craig, I’m sorry, this isn’t going to work.”

“Whoa, wait, what?”

My hands trembled, I dropped the cone on the table and scooted out of the booth. “I’m not good enough for you. I can already tell.”

“Wait-”

I pushed open the doors, bells chiming after me, and walked across the street with my arms crossed, not caring if a car hit me. Just fucking hit me. 

Stopping on the corner of a building, I let myself finally breathe. Then I realized I fucked everything up. Fuck. We were having a good day. And then I couldn’t breathe. I hate myself.

A few people walked by with their dogs, their wives, husbands, sons, daughters. I wondered how many of these people would be dead in six months. How many would die in a car accident? The sun was setting lower. If I started walking now, I could make it home before it got too dark. I tightened my shoelaces, muttering “well, I tried, but bipolar Kyle wins again,” to myself.

Craig poked around the corner.

“Kyle.”

“Oh.”

He walked around, arms out, shoulders hunched up. “What the fuck was that about?”

I couldn’t speak. So many thoughts fizzing in my head and I couldn’t pick one to pluck out and surge through my mouth.

“This is probably a loaded question, but are you okay?”

A streetlight came on.

“I’m okay. I’m sorry. I ruined everything.”

He stared with his mouth slightly open as I tightened my other shoe.

“I’m going to walk home now,” I said. “I’ll let Dr. Vince know that I’m quitting. I’ll go back to my old job.”

“Then how am I going to see you? Unless you want me hanging around South Perk every night. Which won’t work since you work in the mornings… guess I’ll have to quit too.”

“Craig… That’s ridiculous.”

“ _ You’re _ being ridiculous. Is there some, like, I don’t know… A safeword or something you can tell me when you’re about to have a panic attack? I didn’t particularly enjoy sitting alone with a wall of Elvis’s staring down at me.”

“It’s really hard for me to verbalize. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry at all. Is it okay to touch you?”

“Please.”

There is something special about hugs where the other person never tries to pull away. I got one of those hugs that day. He put his fingers in my hair and said, “I won’t ask you about what happened anymore if it hurts you.”

* * *

Even after that, I tried to insist that I walk home because I felt awful, but Craig wasn’t having it. He practically kidnapped me. 

When we left Tony’s, I stared out the window while he drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on my thigh.

“I know this won’t exactly be First Date Discourse either,” he said, “But I feel like I should tell you about my dad. Well, my adoptive dad.”

“You haven’t said much about him, yet.”

“There’s a reason for that. He and my mom are divorced because his alcoholism got out of control. That story I told you about my mom and I going to Waffle House late at night is because that’s when he’d come home and fight with her. After a while, we started going there on his drinking nights to avoid it, only coming home after we figured he was asleep. We kept Trisha in her car seat in the booth with us.”

“Craig, that’s horrible.”

“We did what we had to do to survive. God, I remember I had to move my dresser in front of my bedroom door, or else he’d come in in the middle of the night and yell at me about random shit.”

“That’s…”

“Fucked up. I know.”

Why were we so close to my house already? Was he driving faster? It seemed like he was driving faster, a bit more nervously. 

“Do you still speak to your dad?” I asked.

“Every day. I don’t have a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

Craig sighed. “I live with my dad. I found out he was homeless after the divorce and I couldn’t stand it. I know he fucked up, but he’s my dad. I still love him.”

“Hold on. This is the guy that calls you up to yell at you?”

“He still has some issues. He’s working on it.”

“By taking it out on you?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Kind of sounds that way.”

The car was silent for several minutes, save for the squealing exhaust leak, and the occasional bass-busting truck we passed by, and low, soft 80s jams on the radio. We pulled up and parallel parked in front of the shop. He unbuckled and looked at me through the darkness. 

“I know these kinds of things are hard to talk about, but I needed you to know,” he said. “You’re the only person I can imagine understanding. I don’t have a lot to offer you, I know that. I’m an awkward person, I’m alone or busy most of the time, I don’t know what I am and haven’t bothered to find out, I have probably over $100k in student loan debt, and I live with my dad.”

“You’re taking care of your dad, Craig. That’s different.”

He cupped my face. “You’re sweet. And that’s the thing. I know you have issues that you’re working through. I know that I can’t give you what your girlfriend did. But, dude… when you said you weren’t good enough for me, it broke my heart. Good enough for  _ me? _ I feel like I’m not good enough for  _ you. _ You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in years.”

That day was so wild. All I remember feeling at that moment, with the way he talked to me, the way he looked at me like he wanted me, made me want to continue where we left off in his office. I kissed him, hard. We ended up in the back seat, and I let him put his hands everywhere, he let me put my hands everywhere.

I’m not saying that they’re the *cure* for anxiety, but handjobs certainly ease the symptoms.


	14. weeping willow (mourning)

I can’t go back to these places now.

Sometimes I sit so still, spiders aim to make a home of me, spooling strings between my arm and the wall. Please, make a city of silk akin to New York, Seattle, around my corpse. Make my legs trains, my arms skyscrapers, my throat a park, my skull a museum. 

Please.

_ Oh, please. Oh, stop. Oh, horsefeathers. _

The stream with minnows and birds no longer serves as a sanctuary but a place to be minced by the dead - that conversation ( _ do you have a place? _ I am now my own place), beat for beat (god damn those long pauses), the stage directions ( _ Kyle does not know how to sit. Kyle does not know where to put his hands _ .  _ Kyle now wishes his body would settle into stone, like Stonehenge, or a marble statue so birds can shit on him, he deserves it _ ). The last time I went, maybe a week after he walked away from me permanently, I watched a dead fish, caught up against a rock, unable to float with the rest of the current. It was eviscerated, its guts pulled out like strings of cotton candy. I turned it out with a stick, watched it bumble down and away into the stream. 

I think of our time in the backseat, the windows cracked, the boiling summer air, passerby cigarette smoke, and charcoal fumes, owls cooing, how he pulled my guts out, and it was sweet, I could taste how sweet he was.

I avoid the theater, and Tony’s. In autumn, I turned on the lights of South Perk at six am and sighed. Did any of that really happen? Is this reality anymore? I looked out to the patio, wiping away the frost, see my flowers decaying at the edges of their petals, and think _yes._ _Yes, it happened. Do better next time, will you?_

I ask the dead animals at home: “You saw everything. Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Why would we warn  _ you? _ ” they bellow in unison, “No one warned  _ us. _ ”

* * *

Ike didn’t quite understand our grandmother’s death. He was too young, barely a toddler. My mother told him that he would see her again someday, but it would be a very long time. I was eight, but I understood that death was death, there’s no afterlife, ghosts aren’t real, there’s a logical explanation for everything. But now I see the dead all the time.

A few months after we buried grandma, I was walking with Ike after school. We passed by a lot of restored buildings (the  _ SoDoSoPa) _ , and this older woman - silver bob, gold-rimmed glasses beige tunic and slacks, much like how our  _ savta _ dressed - was sitting on a bench reading. When Ike saw her, he broke off my grip on his hand, galloped to her, face pink with joy, and exclaimed, “Grandma! You’re alive!”

That poor woman was so stunned, staring at him with her mouth open.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said pulling him away, trying not to laugh. “Ike, that’s not grandma. That lady just looks like her.”

“But…”

He cried the whole time I dragged him home. 

My father, upon hearing the story, also laughed. I guess we do share a fucked-up sense of humor. 

Of course, my mother didn’t find it funny at all. She cradled Ike in her lap and scolded us, “She was my  _ mother, _ how dare you?”

Many times I’ll see a boy. His hair will be chestnut brown and his eyes are, too. He will have a peppy gait, buzzing charisma, surrounded by friends. Many times I’ll double-take, thinking  _ Clyde! You’re alive! _

* * *

“Did a snake get into your garden or something?” Wendy asked, a glass of lemonade on her knee, ankles crossed over a wicker chair. Chinese lettering was inked into the arch of her foot. She, Kenny, and I were sitting around on the screened-in porch of her house. Kelso and Jackie purred, curled around each other in my lap. I had just finished telling them about the date, and the dream I had while passed out.

“No, I haven’t come face to face with a snake in years.”

“Cartman doesn’t count?” Kenny joked.

“Maybe you saw one in a movie,” Wendy suggested. “What was the last movie you watched? Before your date yesterday, I mean.”

“Some TV movie about a personal trainer who kills their clients. No snakes.”

Kenny drew his knees up to his chest. He watched the silver windchime clattering in the tree above us.

“Snakes get a bad rap,” he said. “I blame Adam and Eve.”

“This snake was trying to swallow me, I think.”

“How do you know it wasn’t about to talk to you?”

“Didn’t seem like the talking type, Ken.”

We went back and forth like this, turning over every detail of this vision like we were studying leaves. Wendy tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Kenny made a point (which I hadn’t ever considered), that snakes represent change. Snakes leave their skin when it no longer suits them. 

I feel uncomfortable in my skin. Can I leave it behind?

He added to this point that I was on a river, two signs of change, narrative pushing. I’ve got a temporary, but new job, new relationship. 

Wendy asked me if I told Craig about what happened to me yet. I said no. I was scared.

“You need to tell him soon. That’s a deal-breaker for some people.”

* * *

“I’m not used to dating someone who isn’t…”

Craig stared across the table to me. We were eating lunch by the greenhouse - him with some leftover mac and cheese and me with a tomato sandwich I wasn’t enjoying at all. He was patient, never chastising me for my freakout the other Saturday. I was still embarrassed.

It was June now, and the heat layered over us with dull dryness. After that day, we are lunch in his office.

“Who isn’t what?”

He wrung his hands. “I was going to say ‘normal,’ but I know that’s not the right word.”

“Neurotypical.”

“Yeah. That’s what I meant. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’ve never dated anymore for more than a few months in general, actually.”

I’ve never been one to ask about people’s romantic past. I never even asked Bebe about past boyfriends. But this piqued my interest.

“Why not?”

“I’ve just never been able to stick it out long term, I guess.”

Red.

Flag.

He must have clocked how large my eyes became.

He said, “it’s different with you, though.”

“How?”

“I just have a really good feeling about us. I feel connected to you. I know that you have…”

“Issues?”

“... _ troubles. _ I know you have troubles sometimes, but I’m really happy when I’m with you. I can, you know… I can picture us for the long haul.”

Do you see why I fell for the guy? It was too soon to say I loved him, but I did. I realized it just as he said that.

“I can picture it, too,” I said. “You make me want to be a better person.”

“Oh, stop. You’re already a good person.”

You know by now (you as in whoever else ends up reading this besides Dr. T’Soni) (if the burning thing doesn’t happen) that I don’t consider myself to be a good person. I never will be. So, I didn’t believe him when he said I’m a good person, but I believed that  _ he _ believed ( _ my god, you don’t actually know me at all, I’ve been wearing a mask this whole time _ ), and Wendy’s words whipped back to me, hard.

I had to tell him the truth. 


	15. bouvardia (i am no summer friend)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello friends, I just wanted to pop in and apologize for not updating. I really wanted to be able to upload this next cluster of chapters together because of the content. Also, I fucked up my wrist at one of my jobs and have to wear a brace now and then, as it can be painful to write and type.  
> Take care and stay safe,  
> -Kyle, Your Local Garbage Gay

After Craig, I was stuck between “give yourself time to heal” and “you need to fuck someone and get over this.” I opted for the latter.

Dating apps were never a service I thought I’d succumb to, but I don’t have acquaintances I can randomly fuck, but I  _ needed someone.  _ Anyone. Didn’t care who.

Every person I talked to was around my age and wanted a relationship. They wanted marriage, family. I almost hated them. Me, being a temporary psychopath, played along. I asked things like: “What’s your favorite pizza topping?” “Do you like Marvel?” “How do you feel about global warming?” ( _ how do you feel about dudes with dents in their brains? _ ) 

All of them got fed up with 20 questions. All of them ghosted me. But that’s okay. I wouldn’t reply to me either.

A week went by and I gave up that route. 

I was still hungry.

There’s a truck stop not far from me. I went late at night and waited close to the bathrooms. I had just downloaded a new app for orchestrating local hookups. 

Lights in the Pepsi machine flickered. Chilly September air slunk around my bare arms and up my pant legs. Semi-trucks with drivers asleep in the front lined the parking lot. I typed up a post:

**In need of an aggressive top within the next 20 minutes. No talking. Don’t even say hello. If you speak at all, I will leave. Do what you want to and be done. I’m sitting by the bathrooms in Love’s Travel Stop in dark jeans and a Blink-182 shirt. NO TALKING.**

Ten minutes later, a man with some silver in his beard, clad in a red hoodie, walked up to me. I saw, just before he put his hand up to my throat, the green marks around his finger where a wedding ring was.

It’s out of character for me, I know. 

The whole time I thought about how I told Craig I wasn’t about the casual lifestyle, and how I didn’t want to randomly sleep with that girl at the party with the frozen burritos and my puke on the floor.

But… I didn’t feel bad after the truck stop encounter. I was only tired. My mind shut off. All I went with was what my body wanted, and I kept doing what my body wanted until it was woefully bruised, tendered, cadaverous. 

Wendy was sitting in the lobby, watching T.V. on the wall when I got home. She clutched Stan’s shop keys close to her stomach, slouched in the reception chair, still in pale blue scrubs. 

“Cartman heard you leave,” she said as soon as I walked in. “He called me, asking if you were at my house. I tried texting you but you didn’t answer.”

“Sorry.”

“Where the hell did you go?”

“Errands.”

“At midnight?”

“Sure.”

I tried to walk past her, but her gaze made me stop. I don’t have it in my heart to be a dick to Wendy.

“You need to be careful, Kyle. You could get AIDS.”

“Do you really have to come for me like that? I know this already.”

“You could end up in a _ body bag _ .”

“Sounds cozy.”

Wendy suddenly rose, and I could see from what little moonlight shone in the windows that her eyes were wet. The animal eyes were wet. Mine were dry. 

“Don’t you ever say shit like that to me again. Do you know how fucked up it would be if something happened to you?”

“Relax. Nothing is going to happen to me. Ever.”

She stood on her tiptoes and grabbed my shoulders. “I know you’re hurting right now, but please. Be careful. If not for your own sake, then do it for us. You have no idea how much we would miss you.”

I stared down at her.

“Ugh, don’t look at me like you don’t believe me! Trust me.” She then looked under my chin, tilted my face toward to the light with her small, manicured hands. “Your neck…”


	16. virginia creepers (i cling to you)

When I remember this I see a stage. Memories cut themselves at the first fold of velvet.

  
  


[Scene One - 

_ A backdrop of a rusty convenience store with 99 cent taquito posters in the window _ ]

_ Lights splay out on KYLE. TRENT BOYETT with his hand on KYLE’S throat, pressing it against his Jeep door. CLYDE is on the ground holding his nose after being elbowed in the face.  _

TRENT Who do you think you are, Broflovski? You think you can fuck  my girlfriend and get away with it?

KYLE (clawing at TRENT’S wrists) I didn’t know.

TRENT Asshole.

_ TRENT slams KYLE’S head into the car. CLYDE pulls his hands from his face. We can see that he is bleeding. _

CLYDE He’s telling the truth, dude!  She came onto  him.

_KYLE,_ _clearly weakened, suddenly smiles. He’s got nothing left to lose. Time to be an asshole._

KYLE Actually, I came on her. Which is probably good for you. You’d make a terrible stepdad.

TRENT Fuck you!

_ TRENT slams KYLE’S head again. CLYDE bolts up, kicks TRENT in the back of the knee. The goliath falls. KYLE braces himself, wheezing. CLYDE begins kicking TRENT in the chest, against TRENT’S please. CLYDE kicks him once in the face and shuts him up. _

KYLE __ Dude, Clyde, stop!

_ CLYDE kicks TRENT again. KYLE grabs CLYDE’S arm. _

KYLE Stop! He’s out cold. We need to leave,  right now.

_ CLYDE takes another long look at the passed out TRENT. _

CLYDE Fine.

_ CLYDE exits. _

_ KYLE looks around. He bends down and reaches into TRENT’S pocket, and pulls out his cell phone. It is apparent he is dialing 911. KYLE then leaves the phone by TRENT’S head and exits. _

[Scene Two -  _ the street _ ]

_ Enter KYLE and CLYDE below stage, eye level with the audience. CLYDE is holding his nose again. 26-year old KYLE watches from the audience, the only one watching amongst rows of empty seats. Would 27-year old CLYDE be watching right now if he could? 26-year old KYLE watched 16-year old KYLE and 17-year old CLYDE intensely. They do not know he is there. They cannot hear for he is waiting with bated breath. _

KYLE __ You okay? Is your nose broken?

CLYDE I don’t think so. How’s your head?

KYLE A little swirly.

_ They pause for a moment. KYLE gently wipes away the blood. _

KYLE You almost kicked his skull in, Clyde.

CLYDE He almost  strangled  you to death. He deserved it.

KYLE Who’s to say I don’t deserve to get strangled?

CLYDE Me! I don’t want to live in a world where Trent Boyett exists and you don’t.

KYLE (shaking his head) How could you even think of bashing someone’s fucking skull in, for me?

CLYDE Because. 

_ They exchange  _ _ a look _ _. The look that cements their friendship as more intimate than any other relationship they’ve had with family, friends, or other.  _

_ Exit KYLE and CLYDE while 26-year old KYLE watches, hugging a bouquet of black roses. _

[Scene Three -  _ The Broflovski kitchen, spliced with a wall so we can see the living room too _ ]

_ SHEILA and GERALD are sitting at the table sipping coffee and chatting quietly. 26-year old KYLE knows 16-year old KYLE is just on the opposite side of the wall, blanket pinned close to his neck like Dracula - he knows the red marks will fade to yellow-purple clouds and it’s summer. It’s summer and there’s no way to hide that shit unless you want to skulk around looking like Dracula. _

_ KYLE(S) listens. _

GERALD Did you hear Kyle get in last night?

SHEILA I finally went to sleep after hearing him crawl back through his bedroom window. You were in the kitchen?

GERALD In my office. I went up to say something but I couldn’t. I got to his bedroom door, but when I went to open it, I heard him crying.

_ KYLE(S) stiffen. He wraps the blanket tighter around himself. _

SHEILA We need to do something. He was fine before he started hanging out with the Donovan kid.

GERALD I don’t think so. I think Clyde just makes it worse.

SHEILA Either way, they need to be separated. We need to cut off all communication, and keep Kyle in the house until he gets better. He can only go to school and that’s it.

GERALD Are you kidding? That’ll make it 100 times worse. They’re conjoined at the hip.

_ A beat. _

SHEILA Do you think they’re… involved? 

GERALD I’ve thought about that.

SHEILA What should we do?

GERALD What can we do? That’s for him to figure out. 

SHEILA I’ve been thinking of sending him to Greenwood.

GERALD The mental hospital?

SHEILA That way we can separate them, and Kyle can be safe.

GERALD Sounds kind of extreme, Sheila.

SHEILA I don’t know what else to do, Gerald! I’m terrified and I feel this is all we have left. We’re going to lose our son if we don’t take the  **time** and so something now.

_ KYLE crawls away. _

_ KYLE leaves the auditorium, out into the world.  _

  
  
  
  



	17. mountain ash (with me you are safe)

_ We cast our skins and slide  _

_ Into another  _ **_time_ ** _ * _

I’ve been slipping in and out of  **time** , weaving through memories like a snake, licking out random details I’ve not thought of in years.

When I let myself sink into certain memories, it feels as if I’ve left my body and dissolved into a dream where I float above the scene, all the lights and colors are as vivid as the freckles on my hands. Other times I am in my own past body, unable to change the things being done or said - I am a nebulous skeleton, a brain in a brain. I choke on dust from cleaning Ike’s computer. I smell the wine my father has spilled on the carpet. I don’t want to be a passenger in my own life.

Now I observe more. I’ve noticed:

  * The chipped corner of the kitchen counter, supposedly there when we moved here.
  * A long-faced man ingrained in a wood panel in the bathroom. He is melting.
  * Room temperature water tastes better to me than ice water.
  * Soft, layered background vocals in most songs.
  * Food is starting to have a taste again. 



Having control over what I share or don’t share is liberating, though I find myself sharing anyway, and Dr. T’Soni encourages me to share  _ everything _ , though I know  _ damn well _ , and she knows  _ damn well _ I could bundle these secrets into cloth and stash them in a grave.

But as I go back and read, I realize I don’t have anything to hide. Anyone could Google my case and see it in  _ LexisNexis, The Denver Post, Aspen Times, Colorado Daily,  _ etc. Why hide anyway? I’ve spent so many years trying to hide what was all out there anyway. The exposure is so obtuse that I think it's all boring now. I find myself boring. 

* * *

One thing that struck me about Craig, was his absolute stubbornness (I’m terrifyingly stubborn too, and maybe that’s why it didn’t work out). 

Though my stubbornness was defensive, usually pertaining to my body and what goes on or inside of it, his was centered around age-old sentiments. He was voluble about the saying “everything happens for a reason” and how it’s “complete horseshit.” Which is a step above “horsefeathers,” so you know he was serious. Everything is random, luck isn’t real (in fact, without the random, there could be no good thing anyway).

_ What about purpose, Craig? _ I asked.

_ What do you mean? _

_ Don’t you think everyone is predisposed to a role in this world? _

_ No, just do whatever the fuck you want. _

Craig and Susan began outlining some experiments to find a more cost-effective way to desalinate seawater. Water purification isn’t anything new, but it’s much easier to draw from freshwater, like rivers and lakes, but those resources are starting to thin. I’m not saying we’ll be chasing clouds with rain buckets any time soon, but it could happen. (Whoever is reading this - if this is buried and you dug up my therapy here - shut your damn water off when you brush your teeth) (Unless it’s already too late? What’s the use in taking advice from a dead man?)

  
  


One evening after clocking out, we went down to the recreation center (the university had just had the gym remodeled). Craig traded his car keys as collateral for a basketball, and we spent a good hour shooting hoops, taking in slightly sweaty vinegary smells. I made a few shots in a row, to which he teasingly said, “Okay then, Lebron.”

We must have looked strange, two dudes in khaki pants and button-up shirts, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, like two dads shooting the shit while their kids have swim practice.

I told him I played a little in school and even talked about going professional. But then again, I also wanted to chase tornadoes. The things I wanted to be weren’t realistic.

He scoffed, threw the ball. It hit the rim and bounced onto the oak, newly waxed floor.

“You could have done those things,” he said.

I laughed. “Maybe. But I’m good with the path I’ve chosen.”

“What do you want to do after you graduate?”

“Look for jobs, I guess.”

“Ever think about grad school?”

“Sometimes. But I don’t know. I don’t think I’m good enough to get into a Master’s program.”

“Are you kidding me? You’d be amazing.”

“Eh.”

“Any school would be lucky to have you.”

Two guys, one redheaded, short, much paler than I, and the other so tall and lanky with brown hair began running around the elevated race track just above the nets. I shook my head, steered my gaze to the corner of the gym. A giant wall clock ticked on.

“I’m serious,  _ b _ _ ärchen _ . I really, truly believe that whatever your heart wants, your brain can make it happen.”

“I think my translator just glitched. What did you just call me?”

“What I’ve been calling you in my head.  _ Little bear. _ ”

“That’s really fucking cute. How dare you?”

He saddled the ball around his hip, walked to me, and kissed me on the nose. “All I mean to say is: if you want something, no matter how far down into Hell you have to reach, you can get it. There’s literally nothing you can’t do.”

If I could reach into Hell, Craig, does that mean I could get you back?

* * *

It being June, we couldn’t ignore the giant rainbow and baby blue, white, and pink flags that popped up in yards and pasted onto the windows of every store. I even stopped by South Perk one night to help paint a giant “Optimus Pride” on the front door. I’ve never been to a Pride gathering before. I’ve always been too scared. The only one I knew of was Denver Pride, but that’s three hours away. I’m not going to travel three hours to be anxious someplace else when I can be anxious in the comfort of my own home. 

Stan and Wendy go together sometimes because they met at Pride (they were both reaching for the bisexual button bin). Last year, they sent some Snapchats to us in the crowd during a performance. One person walked in front of the camera, totally shirtless, sunburnt to hell, with a metal dog mask and leash and collar.

“What the hell was that?” Cartman asked.

I replayed the Snap. “Uh, looks like a puppy to me.”

“Aw, he’s missing his master,” Kenny cooed.

Cartman frowned. “Is that, like, a role-playing thing or something?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Puppy play.”

Cartman stared hard at me, stared at the phone, then back to me. “The gays don’t deserve rights.”

Kenny kicked his chair, “You can’t say that, Eric!”

Craig had gone with an ex before. When I asked him if he had fun, he shrugged and said, “Sure, yeah. There were a lot of bees, though. Not a lot of places to sit down, either. And it was hot. Also, there were bees.”

“Wow, bees outside? Never thought that would happen in my lifetime.”

“Don’t be a butt.”

I got a text later that day from Stan: “Just found out there were Neo-Nazis at Motor City Pride. No one got hurt but some of these lunatics were armed. There are rumors they may march on Denver. Wendy and I aren’t going. I know you were thinking of going, but I wouldn’t risk it. We can make some rainbow cupcakes at home or some shit idk.”

* * *

One afternoon, Susan’s wife came to the lab with their daughter. They were going on a weekend trip to Albuquerque and wanted to leave straight from the university. Lori, a short woman in jeans and a  _ Highlander _ shirt, held a sleepy toddler to her chest, her cheeks plump on the shoulder.

“Can you say hi to Mr. Craig and Mr. Kyle?” Susan asked her.

Gracie turned her face into her mother’s face.

“She’s  _ very _ shy,” Lori said. “But she gets  _ very _ vocal when we put the  _ Frozen  _ soundtrack on, don’t you?”

“Are you going to be Elsa for Halloween?” Craig asked.

I was a little taken aback. I don’t know how to speak to children. It’s not that they make me uncomfortable, I’m just afraid I’ll accidentally say something that traumatizes them. A good few times, administration at the youth center chose me and other random inmates to speak at schools and share our stories as cautionary tales for school children. Some children were as young as 10, and I’ll never forget, even though my story was edited, how their mouths dropped, their skin drained of color, eyes once electric with curiosity and excitement, sharply pointed into horror. I’m nice to kids. I smile at kids. But every time I see one, I think of those 10-year olds. I think of Ike.

“She was Elsa last year,” Susan said. “I was Anna and Lori was… Well, you tell them.”

Lori rolled her eyes. “She made me be Olaf.”

We all had a laugh at this, and more casual conversation. Gracie stared at Craig for a while (who wouldn’t? He’s beautiful).

Craig noticed and asked her, “You want to look in a microscope?” He looked at the two women, “Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

Craig snapped on gloves and grabbed two small plastic cards. Lori set the girl down. Craig bent low and held one of the cards under her face.

“Spit onto this.”

Without hesitation, she hacked, and a long string of saliva swirled onto the plastic.

“Thank you for your spit, ma’am.”

She giggled. Craig closed the other plastic card on top, then went and slid it into the microscope’s tray. After adjusting the focus, he grabbed a chair and helped her up. She peered in, grabbing fistfuls of her dress.

“WHOA! MAMA MY SPIT IS AN ICE FOREST.”

“Let me see,” Lori looked in. “Oh yeah, it looks like shards of glass.”

Over Lori and Gracie’s heads, Craig smiled at me as if I were the only person in the world. I looked away.

* * *

“Come home with me,” I said in the car on the way home. We were two minutes from the shop and I couldn’t hold the truth anymore.

“What, to stay the night?”

“I’d like that, but you don’t have to. You can just stay for dinner if you want.”

“I don’t have an overnight bag.”

“That’s okay. I have extra stuff if you decide to stay.”

* * *

I led him through a sea of moans and buzzes, the alcohol swabs and shy smiles from clients, Stan, Kenny, and Cartman, hunched over arms, legs, feet.

“Do you like spaghetti?” I asked when we climbed up to my kitchen.

“Sure.”

“Good, because that’s all I know how to make.”

“Don’t you ever eat meals?”

“Nah, I only snack.”

“Well, you are what you eat.”

“Oh, shush.”

He poked around while I boiled noodles, much in the same manner as I did when he showed me his office.

“What the hell is this?” he pointed to a spatula with googly eyes propped up beside the fridge.

“Rodney,” I answered.

He gazed at the photos on the fridge. I had taken down any photos of me and Bebe at that point, so all he saw were various photos of a rotating cast of characters consisting of Cartman, Kenny, Stan, Wendy, and their various family members. There is only one of me and I am not alone.

“How old were you here?” he pointed to the picture of me and Clyde. Clyde is centered, holding a taco out in front of him with both hands, with me on the side, smiling. Both of us were high as fuck and I don’t remember who took our picture. I downloaded it from my Facebook.

“I was 16.”

“Wow, a baby.”

I laughed. “I guess.”

“Who’s this guy?” His finger hovered just in front of Clyde’s face.

“Oh, that was my friend. Clyde.”

“Are you still friends?”

I turned the stove off. Is there a word to describe how it feels for your present to rip into your past? Or for two timelines to converge? There has to be a word.

_ Note from Kyle: Look up Quantum-Mandela Effect _

I turned to Craig and said, “I’d like to think we are.”

Like most responses to the things I say, Craig gave me that look of confusion mixed with pity and didn’t press further.

We ate spaghetti with red wine. I brought him down to my garden and watched as he touched the marigold, the columbines, the iris, the dahlia, the zucchini, and tomatoes. I let him into my space. Let my space go into him.

I sat on the swing bench and rubbed my eyes. Suddenly I was so tired. Tired because I knew I was about to unpetal - my brain screamed  _ PLEASE DON’T REVISIT THIS, DON’T SPEAK OF THIS, GO TO SLEEP. _ Craig sat next to me and pulled my legs over his lap. I rubbed my eyes until I saw fireworks, then opened them to multi-layers of Craig, shifting along the horizon of my vision until he became one figure again.

“I know the way you looked at me today.”

“Sorry?” He said.

“I mean, I noticed. The way you look at me. Like you care about me or something.”

“Or something? I care about you a lot.”

I took his arm, tracing the inside of his wrist with my fingertip. “I care about you too. But you don’t know who I really am, and I’m afraid that when I tell you, you won’t care for me so much anymore.”

He drummed his fingers on my knee. “I’m lost. I thought you were Kyle.”

“I am, but… Remember when you asked me when I figured out I was bi?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“You had a crush on your tutor. Doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”

“It was terrifying for me. I didn’t understand why I was feeling the way I did.” Sliced in between his thumb and forefinger was a crescent wound, red and scabbing over now. He cut himself the day before. I touched it. “I’ve made some bad choices, Craig. I’ve made many bad choices.”

“Why are you being so severe? You were a child.”

“As I said, it’s much more complicated than that. I knew, but couldn’t accept it. I wish I did. It would have saved me a lot of heartaches. I let my parents tell me who I was. A son, a brother, a student. Everything I was, was attached to a role - I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted.”

“You seem to know who you are now.”

“Somewhat. I try to be the adult that child me needed. But it’s hard, and I don’t know if it actually matters at the end of the day. Sometimes, I feel like my own life doesn’t belong to me.”

“That’s a very Quentin thing of you to say.”

Fuck, more Faulkner.

“Well.”

“Well. There was another guy, then?”

“Yeah.”

“It was the guy in the photo, wasn’t it?”

I bit my lip and nodded. “I think I did like him. Sometimes I didn’t, though.”

“Oh. Do you think he liked you too?”

“Not a chance. If there were any feelings, they were definitely one-sided.”

“His loss.”

That sick urge to laugh rose up, flittered into my lungs as I suppressed it. I scoffed instead. “No, it’s my loss because he’s fucking dead.”

I couldn’t look at Craig. I know he was staring at me, I could feel his eyes burning. If only I run away as I did before. My legs welded to his lap, he kept them there, waiting. My stomach sank so low it anchored my ass to the seat and there was no other safe space to go to. I could not bury myself alive in the garden, couldn’t return to the kitchen with my mother and dough in my hands.

“Oh,” Craig whispered. “Oh. Oh, God. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

“I am too.”

He cupped my face, grazing his thumb over my ear. “What happened to you?”

“I want to tell you everything. But I don’t know where to start.”

“Tell me however you need to. I’ll listen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * "The Sleepers" by Sylvia Plath


	18. sweet briar (i wound to heal)

All of us knew each other from elementary school, but I’d never really spoken to Clyde until high school. The popular kids were singled out on day one, and Clyde was one of them, so he hadn’t spoken a word to me since 5th grade, and I’m pretty sure even then, the most he asked of me was to borrow a pencil.

No, I truly met Clyde Donovan in the parking lot after school. I was just leaving the library (I was there finishing past due homework so my parents wouldn’t see) when I rounded the corner to the custodian exit steps. 

I heard him say: “You can only make those jumps because you have fat fucking tires.”

I saw Token Black on a bike (with fat tires indeed) at the bottom of the steps, grinning.

“It’s not about my tires, it’s about  _ balance. _ You could make the jump too if you didn’t keep freaking out about height.” Just then, he saw me about to walk by and yelled out for me. 

I stopped and readjusted my backpack strap. “Hey.”

I liked Token. We sat next to each other in English that year, and he was quite a chatty guy. I couldn’t help but like him. Everyone did. We picked each other and a couple of other students to be in our book report group for  _ The Great Gatsby.  _ We made up a skit where a scene took place from Daisy’s point of view… with Token as Daisy. Yes. Even since then, I’ve harbored a soft spot for the 1920s Flapper Drag Queen aesthetic, and I’m not sure where on the Richter Scale of gayness that puts me.

Anyway.

Token asked, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing, just leaving.”

“You want to chill with us?”

Clyde whipped his head around to look at me, then whipped back to Token. “We don’t even know him!”

Token frowned. “Yeah, we do. That’s Kyle Broflovski. We’ve known him since kindergarten, dumbass.” He wheeled slightly over to me. “Sorry, he  _ does _ know you. Clyde is just a little high right now.”

“I get it,” I said. “You’re usually high in American History, too. I sit right behind you, Clyde.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Sometimes you get dandruff on my desk.”

Clyde squinted with his mouth open. 

Token doubled over laughing, holding his stomach. I thought he might fall off the bike. “Dude, I told you… you’re fucking crusty.”

“I am not!”

Clyde looked at me again, meeting me with amber eyes and a button nose. Immediately I wanted to take it back.

“Do I really get dandruff on your desk, dude?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Tell me next time it happens, will you?”

“Sure.”

Token was still laughing. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a whole ecosystem was living in your head.”

“Okay, damn, I get it. I’m gross.”

I think Clyde would have fit in with our Trash Boi group. 

“I’m hungry as fuck,” Token said. “You want to go to Arby’s with us?”

“Is there even one around here?”

“Yeah, there’s like a little corner one outside of town. Head and Shoulders over here and I-”

“Hey!”

“-we go there all the time.”

As if my stomach heard him, it started growling. “I could eat.”

* * *

Token tied his bike to his Range Rover. He tied us in too.

I sat in the back, watching the passing cornfields and grazing cows. 

“So, Kyle.”

Token’s eyes glanced at me from the rearview mirror.

“Yes?”

“You got a boo?”

I laughed. I wished I could have said I liked this guy Adam, but if I did, they could have slammed the brakes and tossed me out onto the dirt road.

“I’ve got me and my hand,” I said.

“Cheers to that, bro. Me too.” Clyde twisted around to fist bump me.

“Well,” Token continued, “I’m only asking because that one girl in our group, Heidi Turner, thinks you’re cute.”

“She does?”

“Yeah, she really wants you to dick her down.”

“Dude, no,” Clyde turned to me again. “She’s fucking weird man. She raised her arms the other day and her armpits were actual bushes. I swear I heard Wookie noises coming out of them.”

“Maybe Kyle is into that,” Token said. We entered the drive-thru line.

“I’m willing to find out.”

Clyde scrunched his nose. “Gross.”

I had yet to text my mother to let her know where I was, so I flipped open my phone to do so. There was a message from her: “Where are you?? ASS HOME. NOW.”

I said, “Can’t. Getting food w/ friends c u l8er.”

She started calling. I shut the phone.

A couple of kids sat on the sidewalk with a bottle of pills. They popped them back like they candy.

Token pulled up to the speaker and started ordering. I peeped my wallet and found about two dollars and some change.

“What do you want?” Clyde asked, his head turned so I could only see his profile.

“Nothing. I’m short on cash today.”

He smirked at me. “I didn’t ask if you had money. I asked what you wanted.”

* * *

Around finals weeks, Token slowly started breaking off from us. Then he started dating another girl from English and spent all of his time with her that wasn’t spent bookkeeping in his dad’s office.

I thought Clyde wouldn’t come around since Token wasn’t there to buffer between us anymore, but I was wrong. At first, my parents were happy I had someone to hang out with. Clyde would come over to the house and have dinner with me and my parents, sit politely when Ike showed off his  _ Minecraft _ castles. He would say  _ shalom  _ to my mother when we came home from school. My father joked that Clyde was now an honorary Jew and we would be happy to drum up a bar mitzvah celebration.

It was a different story when I went to Clyde’s house. His father sat in the living room every evening, feet propped up in front of the T.V., smoking. He never spoke much to me, but would give a terse, windmill wave that created a circle of smoke.

Amongst the ashen hallways, photos of Clyde’s late mother hung on the walls. I remember when she died - the news of death slinking down on us like a thin veil of fog in only a matter of hours - the currency of small-town tragedies. 

Clyde never brought her up. She watched me, waiting to be introduced. Death impedes on manners. I never said hello to the dark-haired woman with a button nose.

I wanted Clyde to like me. I spent so many hours only seeing the back of his head, and now that I had his eyes, I wanted to keep them there. I laughed at all of his butchered jokes. I never disagreed with him, even when it was painful. One particular night, after an onslaught of booze and debauchery, the tried to convince me that the sun is actually a flaming rock and if we, the human race, harnessed its energy, we could create fire-powered elevators. 

I asked what he meant, and he said  _ flames in the wires. _

_ Like electricity? _

_ Yeah, like that. _

Spending time at my house became volatile. My parents would stultify me in front of Clyde. My mother, especially, wouldn’t let me get a word in to defend myself. 

I stayed in Clyde’s basement for hours. We ate pizza rolls, mozzarella sticks, and played  _ Call of Duty _ when we weren’t snorting up lines in someone else’s bathroom.

I was sunk into the couch, my throat dry, my eyes wet, sniffling, when he said he believed his father wished Clyde was dead. He blamed himself for his mother’s death. And he believed that his father blamed Clyde too. I could not speak, because I didn’t believe it was my place to judge what goes on in the minds of others… who am I to say Clyde’s father didn’t blame him? What could I say anyway that would numb his vexation? He was already numb.

“You know what that cocksucker did right after he got her life insurance money?” he said one night, passing me a joint while we sat on a bench by Stark’s Pond. I leaned forward, basketball in my lap. 

“What?”

He always waited for me to say  _ what _ when he spoke this way. Like he wanted to gauge how interested I actually was. It was cute.

“He bought that ‘78 King Cobra that’s out in the driveway sometimes. You’ve seen it.”

“Holy shit, really?” I asked, then sucked in a long hit, watching him nod like  _ you get it? You feel me? _ He had also just switched shampoos so his hair bounced around his face.

“He bought it, like, a month after she died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“But I mean, wouldn’t you do the same? You know, to distract yourself?”

“You think material shit can replace people?”

“That’s not what I fucking said, Clyde. I’m only saying it’s a distraction.”

It was August now. We were just about to start our senior year of high school and had spent the whole summer breathing off each other. I sobered up. At least, I was trying to. I kept my nose clean for a good two weeks at that point. It just wasn’t doing anything for me, and I hated waking up not knowing where I was.

We were in his basement. I watched him throw darts.

I couldn’t hold it in.

“My parents want to send me to a mental hospital,” I said.

He stopped, arm cocked, an instant marble statue. “For real?”

“I overheard them the other night. They can’t handle me anymore and they want to get rid of me.”

Clyde looked at me for a long time, then at the dartboard, and threw. Bullseye.

“We’re not letting that happen,” he announced.

“I don’t think I have a choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

He walked up to the board and ripped out the little plastic arrows, and pegged them into the bullseye at once. “Let’s run away.”

“T-together?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, I…”

“Look, our families hate us. What’s the point of sticking around?”

“I don’t think your dad actually hates you. And I don’t think my family hates me. They just don’t understand me.” I leaned against the air hockey table.

Clyde stared at me again, longer this time, focused on the blossoming bruises on my neck. 

Then he said, so quietly: “Eventually they’ll hate you. People hate what they can’t understand.”

I didn’t believe it to be true, but it still felt like a golf ball hitting the back of my head when he said it.

He went on, scheming out loud about how we could leave that very night and keep going until we were out of state. We could go around the whole country even! Stay in cheap motels and pick up girls (another golf ball when he said this).

“What about money?” I pressed.

“I have an allowance saved up.”

“Okay, and what happens after that runs out?”

“We can sell.”

“Oh fuck no, I’m not about to be a traveling drug dealer on a fucking ice cream truck or something.”

“Well,” he grinned. “You won’t need to worry about that.”

“...why?”

“We’re taking the Cobra.”

* * *

Green beans. Sweet potatoes. Grilled chicken. These things were on my plate that night. Clyde was seven houses away, packing a bag, probably snacking away on something as he did so. He and his father never ate meals together.

I pushed the metal spokes into the spine of a green bean, splitting it in half. My fork scraped the ceramic and Ike winced.

“Something wrong with your food, Kyle?” My mother asked after swallowing iced tea.

“No, it’s perfect.” I didn’t look at her. I ate a little faster to catch up with everyone.

My father cleared his throat. “So boys, your mom and I were thinking about seeing  _ District 9 _ tomorrow night. We were hoping you’d come with us.”

Without skipping a beat, Ike said: “That movie looks stupid.”

I said, “You think everything looks stupid.”

“Everything  _ is _ stupid.”

My mother just rolled her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

“We haven’t been to the movies as a family in months.” Gerald was getting into his authority suit again. “We’re going tomorrow.”

Ike shook his head. “I have plans.”

“For what?” I laughed. “You going to rob a village with your  _ Runescape _ girlfriend?”

“Coming from someone whose  _ World of Warcraft _ character is a girl.”

“So? Girls are cool.”

“Literally your internal fedora is showing.”

“How?!”

“GiRls aRE CoOL.”

“Shut up, you’re like 13.”

“Okay boys, we get it. That’s enough,” my mother groaned. She took another long sip of tea. I smelled the faintness of alcohol when she set down the sunflower-patterned glass.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

I wondered, staring down the handle of my fork if this was a cover-up to take me to Greenwood. As an adult, I know they couldn’t legally drop me off at a psychiatric ward without my consent unless I was dangerous. Still, they could have worked up to it and coaxed me into going voluntarily. They really just wanted to go to the movies.

* * *

“Where the fuck are you?” Clyde texted.

“I’m still packing. I waited until my parents went to bed.”

The truth: I had just started packing. When my parents bid adieu for the night, and the house was all silent save for the ticking grandfather clock in the family room, I ran to the bathroom and puked up everything I told my mother was perfect. Fuck, this was really happening. I was really going to  _ leave. _

My mother knocked on the door. I was still hugging the toilet, sniffling.

“ _ Bubbe, _ you okay?”

“Yeah, Ma. Just threw up a little, it’s fine.” I flushed the toilet.

She opened the door, squinting and red-eyed with a nightgown on. She pressed her hand to my forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”

“I think I ate too much”

“No such thing.”

“Tell that to the toilet.”

She helped me up. “Come on, go sleep it off.”

I did as I was told - went to my room, changed into pajamas, wrapped myself up in blankets. She came back with a cup of ice cubes and set them on my nightstand.

“Suck on some ice in about ten minutes, it’ll help.”

“Okay. Good night.”

I thought she’d leave with my goodnight, but no, she stayed there, clearly wanting to ask something.

“What is it, Ma?”

“You’re not going to tell me who put those bruises on you, are you?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because it was my fault. I started it.”

“It doesn’t matter. I want to file a police report first thing tomorrow. No one puts their hands on my baby and gets away with it.”

“Mom, please. I don’t want a whole big fuss over this. Besides, I’m not telling a cop anything either.”

She sighed. “Fine. You can have it your way for now, but I’m not letting this go.”

“I know.”

She leaned to pat my head but stopped just before touching my hair. She gave a tiny wave instead.

“Good night, Kyle. Feel better. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Now I was packing. I wore pajamas still, with a jacket. I folded only a few things into a backpack: two shirts, underwear, jeans, socks, deodorant. I quietly grabbed my toothbrush and a bar of soap from the bathroom. Looking around my bedroom, I wanted to take my books and CDs but knew, much like this old life, I couldn’t take  _ everything _ with me. I slid in only  _ Alice in Wonderland _ and a Gorillaz album. Then, I wrote Ike a letter. I don’t remember what it said, but I quietly slipped it under his door, listening as he muttered petty insults to his online friends. I don’t remember what I wrote.

Clyde texted again: “DUDE YOU NEED TO GET HERE LIKE RIGHT NOW.”

I went back to my room, slung my backpack over my shoulder and crept out of my bedroom window. It was nearly one in the morning when I left to face the world.

* * *

Clyde was sitting in a lawn chair in his front yard. His leg bounced. He was sweating, twitching, smoking. His hands shook.

“I’m fucked,” he said.

“Huh?”

“God, I’m so fucked.”

“What do you mean?”

He got up. The chair fell behind him. In the light of his cigarette, I could see red snakes in his eyes. His nose was running.

“Dude, are you high right now?”

“I think so. I think. I took. I don’t know what I took. I think I took too much.”

“Clyde, what the FUCK. What is happening right now?”

“Trent. It’s Trent Boyett. He had to go to the hospital. I broke a couple of ribs or some shit. His face is all fucked up. He fucking… he just fucking told the hospital people that it was us. That it was me. His dad called my dad and he wants to press charges. I can’t go to jail, man. I won’t. No fucking way.”

“They can’t pin the whole thing on you, not really…” I don’t know how I was able to keep any composure. “You saved my life.”

“No, I took it too far. I could have killed him.”

“But you didn’t…”

Clyde rubbed his eyes. His own backpack sat on the ground at his feet.

“You need a lawyer, Clyde.”

“No… I don’t want any of this.”

“What do you want to do then?”

“We’re leaving. We’re leaving and we’re not fucking coming back.”

He was still shaking. 

“I don’t know, Clyde. If we take off now and get caught later, it’s going to make things a lot worse.”

He drew the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled a slither of smoke in my face. “I thought you were my friend.”

“I am!”

“Then  _ help _ me.”

“I’m trying to help you think straight, dude. You’re too fucked up right now.”

“You know what? Fine. If you want to stay here, it’s whatever. I’m going no matter what.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

He walked to the garage and I followed. I knew he knew what he was doing. He fucking knew there was no way I’d let him drive alone. When we opened the side door, Clyde flipped on a light.

I had never seen a Mustang up close before (never been much of a car buff), but this one was beautiful: the rounded hatchback door, geometric-patterned rims, bright banana paint, and a massive red cobra decal garnishing the hood.

“Damn.”

“Special edition,” Clyde remarked.

He threw his backpack in the rear seat and climbed in.

“Clyde. No.” As soon as I saw him behind the wheel, my decision was cemented. I was going with him. I threw my backpack in too, then held my hand out. “Give me the keys.”

“It’s a stick shift.”

“I can drive stick.”

He slapped the keys in my palm and scooched over to the passenger side.

My parents drove bigger cars, so when I sunk into the leather, I didn’t expect to be so low to the ground. How does someone drive this thing with bumps in the road? All the undercarriage must scrape now and then. I grazed my hand over the interior door. All stitching and leather. The eight-track tape player was empty. I thought if I turned on the radio I would hear a broadcast from 1978, the car itself felt like a  **time** machine.

Staring rigidly at the dashboard, Clyde said my name.

“Yeah?”

“As soon as the garage is open, we have to peel out of here, understand? There’s no going back.”

“I know.”

“This thing has a V8 engine and it’s loud as fuck. As soon as my dad hears, he’ll wake up and come out running. We get one chance, Kyle.”

“Let’s make it count, then.” I nodded to the garage door remote, clipped to the sun visor. “Do it.”

He reached and pressed the button. I held my breath. When I saw the door lift and a sky wide with stars, I ignited the engine (just one decibel louder than my heart), grabbed the shifter, the skinny black wheel, and floored into the street.

We made it just outside of town limits and Clyde began to relax. He took his seatbelt off and leaned out the window like a puppy.

At approximately 2:40 am, Roger Donovan called the Park County Police Department to report a stolen car. He had checked the basement to see if Clyde was hanging out there. No trace of him. He checked in his son’s room and found the area strewn about - a terrifying storm of clothes, videogames, food wrappers, and sports gear lying about. But no Clyde.

Roger then called the Broflovski family to see if perhaps Clyde was over there (he wanted more than anything to rule out Clyde as a suspect). A groggy Gerald answered his cell phone, but happily obliged Roger and did a sweep of his home. He checked Kyle’s room only to find his own son missing. The bed was made. All books were lined neatly on the shelf. There wasn’t a hair to be found. He had left behind one sticky note on the corner of his desk. It read: I’m Sorry.

Ike was still awake, but unaware that Kyle had left. When Gerald opened Ike’s bedroom door, he saw the lined notebook paper on the floor. He picked it up, skimmed over the words, and swore. Ike asked to read the letter but Gerald would not let him.

Gerald hung up with Roger, then called the police himself. The county police wrote a report of both boys missing.

By 3:30 am we were westbound, just outside of Gypsum. We decided just before then that we would drive all the way to California if we could. I was getting tired and wanted to park somewhere but Clyde insisted we weren’t far enough from South Park to rest.

We had shut our phones off because of all the calls from our parents and concerned friends. Clyde opened a state map, smoothed it out on his lap, and hovered over it with a small flashlight.

“What’s the first thing you want to do when we get to California?” I asked him.

“Megan Fox.”

“You’re going to have to be more realistic.”

“Okay. I… I don’t know. I don’t really care what’s there. I just want to be happy.”

By 5:30 am we stopped and pissed. We are stale grits and coffee at a 24-hour diner in Grand Junction. We were three hours away from the Utah border.

_ The Park County Police Department is in search of CLYDE DONOVAN and KYLE BROFLOVSKI. Neither family nor law enforcement has been able to contact or determine the whereabouts of these individuals. Both were last seen last evening in their own homes. Both are considered to be mentally unstable, possibly armed and dangerous. They are suspected to be in a yellow, two-door 1978 King Cobra Mustang with a custom license plate of “DVAN180.” _

_ Clyde Donovan is 5’7”, 150 lbs, brown hair, brown eyes. Kyle Broflovski is 5’9” 160 lbs, red hair, green eyes. _

_ Anyone who has information should call Colorado Central Dispatch at (719) 547-8976. _

Not long after we left the diner, and the black of night was unfurling into blues, we heard the siren. Flashing lights filled the car.

“Fuck.” I started to slow down. I thought: Well, At Least We Tried.

“What are you doing? Go!”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Go!”

“We have to stop-”

This is the part that made me stop believing in God. If we are all inherently good, carved like marble from his image, then why do we all have the capability to break? (I suppose that’s the downside of being shaped by someone else.) (especially when we’re made of such breakable things.)

Why do we all have that root of evil planted so deep in our bellies, finally sprouting through to our brains and makes us stuff our parents into trunks, chop up our husbands and wives and scatter their limbs in the mountains? Why, when another day teased us with fruitful promises, when He wants to fill our lives with blessings, did my best friend press a knife to my neck?

“Speed up or I’ll kill you.”

“Clyde... “

“I’m not fucking around.”

“Please. Please, don’t. You wouldn’t…”

“I would.”

He pressed the handle in. The police car began yelling at us through a loudspeaker: PULL OVER. PULL OVER. NOW.

“Don’t pull over,” Clyde warned.

“I have to!”

This is the part where I realized that I lost Clyde. I didn’t know who this monster was. This person who brought a switchblade down across my cheek to get his threats taken seriously.

I cried.

I don’t know how I was able to speed up. I felt my own warm blood seeping down my face, dropping off at my jaw.

I drove, drove. I weaved. Clyde freaked when another car started tailing. I’m just glad I didn’t crash into any innocent bystanders.

Clyde twisted and turned in his seat, sometimes accidentally swiping my arm with the blade. At one point he hugged the seat, staring out the back slats of the window.

_ Written on a separate piece of paper and taped inside Kyle’s journal: _

_ Is love a kind of gravity? (Affinity.) And is the space between people and between objects a sort of meat, or matter? Maurice Merleau-Ponty coined the term  _ flesh of the world _ which he characterized as  _ a sort of incarnate principle,  _ this charged space, a viscous tension between organisms in relation - space we commonly think of as empty. (I made a drawing recently in which a caveman is saying,  _ Love is a very diffuse meat). 

- _ My Meteorite, Harry Dodge, pg. 165 _

Increase momentum. Velocity. Panic. Fuck.

A third car faces us head-on. We’ll be out of gas soon (dumb) and I’ve given up on the idea of surviving the next few minutes.

I keep going, swerve around the cops just barely.

_ We’re not going to make it, we’re not going to make it… _ This is Clyde’s new muttering mantra.

He’s right.

I steer to the right, close to a strip mall, ready to slow down and end this. I don’t care if he slits my throat. 

But he doesn’t. He takes the wheel from me. I scream for him to stop. I pump the breaks. I  _ tried _ to pump the brakes.

We hit a beautiful cedar tree going 60 miles an hour.

The car becomes space,  **time** less, and we are meteors - though I

I was stationary, strapped in orbit forever and the other body ricocheted through cosmos, insides on fire

crashed into me then into the beyond space, cracking into the bark and sizzling on the hood

a snake’s feast

The lights were broken in but the sun was rising and I could see his eyes staring me down as he lied there snapped in half,

putting it together in his brain that he was in pieces and would die in pieces.

An arm reaches into the window, puts a mask over my nose and mouth, tells me to breathe, breathe. I am covered in my own blood, shards of glass stick out of my arms and chest. One in my neck.

You’re Lucky, the paramedic says.

I ask if I’m dead.

She says I almost was. She says I am Lucky, Lucky, Lucky.


	19. peach blossom (i am yours)

The transition from hospital to handcuffs was scarily fast. One moment I was looking up at my blood bag, the next I was looking into the bleary eyes of a judge and jurors. My father represented. When I told him everything, just as I have written everything here, he put his face in his hands and sighed. 

At first, Clyde’s father wanted me convicted for manslaughter. He and his lawyer accused me of kidnapping his son and stealing his car. 

I saw Token on the other side of the room at one point, but couldn’t speak to him. 

Slideshows. One scene from multiple angles. I am not an expert in psychology (obviously), but I believe they wanted to see if I showed any remorse when they showed photos of Clyde’s corpse. 

The wounds on my body matched the timeline of my story.

“My son is not a fighter. He does not often stick up for himself. He wanted to make his friend happy. These may be his faults, but they are also his strengths. What has happened here, is the plaintiff’s son took advantage of Kyle’s kindness. He took what Kyle thought was friendship and turned it into a parasitic relationship.” 

This is what my father said to the jury. I told him before that I hated it. I told him to say something else. He told me, “If you want them to sympathize with you, you have to paint a picture. Sorry, Kyle, this is the narrative we have to go with.”

It seemed the general opinion of me was still on the fence until a damning testimonial from Trent Boyett. When he walked in, face bruised to hell and torso wrapped tighter than a mummy, I thought I was fucked. 

When I say damning, it was damning to Clyde.

“ _ Clyde _ is the one who tried to kick my face in,” he said. “I have no fucking doubt he’d threaten to kill this asshole too. I mean, look at his fucking face. You think he did that shit to himself? You’re all fucking idiots if you do.”

When it came to the verdict, I sat next to my father, hands folded on the table. The jurors, a box of strangers who would undoubtedly go home to their families, sit around the kitchen table with beef stew and bread and talk about this case, found me not guilty of involuntary manslaughter. However, there was still grand theft auto, resisting arrest, and destruction of property. 

Did no one care that I lost my best friend? Did no one care about the things I saw? The sounds I heard? Every time they flashed those pictures I heard the thunder of bones breaking, metal crushing.

The judge reassured me that my time in Zebulon Pike Youth would have an emphasis on mental health rehabilitation and education. He said, in front of everyone, that he hoped I would take this time to figure out what kind of man I needed to be. 

I could hear my mother weeping in the stands.

* * *

The first thing Cartman said to me when he was showing me around was “There’s literally almost no privacy, so don’t even bother trying to get a blowjob. They’re fucking hawks over here.”

“I’m not interested, thanks,” I said, clutching my new, starchy blanket.

“I wasn’t  _ offering _ , you dumb fuck.”

“Geeze, sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry to anyone here.  _ Sorry _ won’t get you anywhere.”

That paramedic said I was lucky to be alive. I didn’t feel lucky at all. I wished I was dead.

Cartman told me he was in for burning down his ex-girlfriend’s house. Lucky for him, there wasn’t anyone inside it. I asked him if he intended to kill her and he said no, he just wanted her to have nothing to come back home to. 

He was scheduled to be released before me and it scared the shit out of me. I hadn’t made any other friends, really. Most of the other kids I met in there, upon release, knew they’d more than likely be back within a few months to a year. It’s a cruel system. We promised each other we’d meet up again as soon as I was out.

I spent six months with a new roommate who liked to yell about pussy in his sleep. Eventually, I was able to turn it out. I would wake him up too sometimes with my nightmares. Even trade.

Most of my days consisted of self-isolation. I read, worked out, went to counseling. The doctor assigned to me never showed any reaction to the explanation of my feelings. He simply let me vent, took notes while I rambled away (which, by the way, took a long time to get to that point because I never wanted to speak). I finished “high school” with a 3.9 GPA.

They let me go the next summer with a record of good marks and letters of recommendation. They tried to get in touch with my parents to let them know I was being released a little early but received no answer. I panicked. Yes, I would be 18 by the time they let me go, but if there was no one to pick me up when I got out, what the fuck was I meant to do?

The faculty at the youth center finally came to me and told me I had been disowned, and my next steps needed to be planned carefully, as they were crucial to me not ending up back in there. They asked if I had other family members around. No. Friends? Doubt it.

My mantra was:  _ I’m an adult, I can do this. I’m an adult… _

But when I stepped back out into the street for the first time in over a year, I realized how much of a child I still was.

I sat on the sidewalk, knees tucked into my chest, sobbing with my plastic grocery bag of what little I owned: a paperback sci-fi book, my release papers, grades, the letters, loose change I scraped from a fountain, and Cartman’s home phone number on a tiny scrap of paper. My clothes were donated and too short for me. My shoes had pink laces.

I walked for about 40 minutes to a brewery and asked a server if they had a payphone I could use, holding my hand over my scar. People on the street stared at me and I was getting self-conscious. One of the patrons asked me what decade I was living in. The server shook her head and offered for me to use a landline in the back office.

When she brought me back there, she gave me a glass of ice water and I’ll never forget how after crying and walking all afternoon, how much this kindness meant to me and I wish there was a way I could let her know this now. 

I dialed and got a voicemail greeting: “Hello, this is Liane’s home. I can’t get to the phone right now. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m able!”

Beep.

“Uh, hi. Your mom sounds nice. Sorry, this is Kyle Broflovski. I was, uh, Cartman’s, uh, roommate at-”

Cartman picked up, “What the fuck?”

“Cartman?”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Calling you… because I got released today. I’m at some brewery right now.”

“Holy shit, dude, that’s… why aren’t you at home?”

I looked around the dim office. I was alone, but I could still hear all, all the chatting and music and alcohol on the other, far side of the building. The computer hummed. A puppy calendar fell off a corkboard. 

“They disowned me. They’re gone.”

“What?” 

“They’re gone,” I repeated, having to remind myself too. I was still in shock.

“Fuckers.”

“I guess Clyde was right.”

Silence. I stared at the calendar on the floor.

“Listen, Kahl. You’re out now. Do yourself a favor and forget everything that asshole has ever said to you,  _ capeesh _ ?”

“I…”

“You’re lucky you called just now. I’m not even allowed here. My mom isn’t home so I snuck in to grab some stuff. Where are you at, specifically?”

“This place is called Cerberus Brewery. It’s off of Colorado Avenue and 7th street.”

“I’ll be there in an hour. Don’t go anywhere.”

* * *

“So yeah, he came and picked me up, and from then on we lived in that car. He looked for apprenticeships. I’ve worked as a busboy, a roofer, a cashier. Now I’m here.”

Craig still held on to my knees (which surprised me). He hadn’t said a word the entire time, only listened intently, even when I stammered. He waited. I knew he felt sorry for me and I hated it. He couldn’t help it, and maybe I’d feel sorry for me too, but I hated it.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s okay. I just wanted you to know.”

He shifted and laid his head back, staring at me. “I’m sorry that all happened to you. It’s a miracle, really. Despite everything, you grew into a beautiful person.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“I’ve met a lot of incredible people, Kyle. You are easily the kindest, most incredible of all of them.”

“You haven’t known me that long.”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know.” I was doing everything I could to not cry, but a few tears escaped. “I have a hard  **time** accepting positive affirmations, but thank you. In my heart of hearts, I do believe you, but… it’s just hard, you know?”

“I do. I understand. But I’m going to keep reminding you.”

We sat for a few more minutes in silence. The neighbors were out, splashing in their pool, blasting country music.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he whispered. “I can’t even begin to imagine how it feels to lose someone like that.”

“Shitty,” I said. “But when I remember Clyde, I try to only remember the good things. Everything he did in his last moments… I don’t believe it was really him. I’ll always remember the guy who just wanted to smoke and hang out. He just wanted to be happy.”

He squeezed my thigh. More silence.

Then: “So wait, you really haven’t heard from your family since?”

“Not a word.”

“You never went back to your house?”

“Oh, I did. They moved. I have no clue where they are now.”

“I can’t believe they just left you.”

“I can.”

“It’s fucking bullshit.”

“Yeah, but I’m over it.”

“No, it’s fucked up to abandon your own child like that.”

When I think about this conversation now, I can’t help but wonder if Craig was projecting a little. But we all do that sometimes.

“Babe, I appreciate you getting mad for me, but honestly, it’s been so long now that it doesn’t bother me much. If I had gone back home, I wouldn’t have the family that I have now. You and I may have never met.”

“You don’t know that. We still could have met.”

“I’m only saying. This is why I think things happen in the order they happen.”

He just smiled and shook his head. I could sense he was going to go on another life and philosophy rant, so I pulled him in and kissed him before he could start.

We were both a bit wine-drunk, so Craig stayed the night. He used my shower, my bed. He wore my clothes. He asked me about my lake rocks, my animal bones. We watched T.V. and cuddled. He asked me if I liked having my hair played with and I said I didn’t know, no one has ever asked. We made out until our mouths and our hands were sore. In the early morning hours, he held onto my back, nuzzling his face into my spine. I rolled over and kissed his neck, holding him close until it was time to begin a new day of promises.

  
  



	20. catchfly (i am a willing prisoner)

I spent several minutes the next morning staring at my fingernails. Whenever I revisit Clyde’s story with anyone, or I think about it too much, I start creeping out of my body. I need to concentrate on my limbs to remind myself that I’m still alive. I used to try looking in a mirror but it made me sick.

I stood by the fridge, curling and uncurling my fingers, stretching them out to feel all the bones.

Craig walked out from the hallway, rolling my sleeves up to his elbows. My clothes looked better on him.

He touched my hip and kissed my temple.

I snapped out of my weird meditation and went back to packing our lunches. He was going to hate what I put in his bag: Carrots and crackers and a sandwich. Water. I had yet to see him drink a whole water bottle.

“Why do you keep this photo?”

I looked up. Craig was staring at the photo of Clyde and me differently now. Switching from nostalgic fascination to billowing concern, he sought my tired face and asked again, “Why do you have this photo? Doesn’t it remind you of what he did?”

I chewed my lip. Thank god it was early morning and my brain was bare enough to answer him without editing myself:

“I don’t need a picture to remember what he did. I see it on my face every day. But that picture, that was my  _ friend. _ The friend I knew. The friend I needed him to be. Clyde was so much more than that story I told you yesterday. He doesn’t live as a monster in my mind. That picture was a good moment. And I don’t want to forget the good moments, or pretend they never existed because something terrible happened.”

“I can respect that.”

“You better,” I said, half-teasing, half-serious. I was still barefoot, sweating on the kitchen tile. “I hope this doesn’t change anything between us.”

“Nope.”

“Just like that, huh? You don’t care?”

“I care, but at the same time, I really don’t. It’s in the past. I can say with 110% certainty that it doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”

“How do you feel about me?”

His hands were in my pockets now, and his face a little slack-jawed.

I panicked. “You don’t have to answer that.”

“No, I will. I mean, I know we’ve only been dating a short while, but I do feel like I care about you in a way that’s… more intense than before. I’m really happy that I’m with you.”

An alarm clock, I assumed Cartman’s, since Kenny was always the last to wake up, went off screeching. There was a horrendous  _ slap,  _ a cease of the alarm, and loud grumbling.

We smiled at each other. 

I said, “Make sure I know that when things aren’t going well.”

“You mean like running after you when you bolt out of ice cream shops? Sure thing.”

“Sometimes I’m worse than that. I’m sorry in advance.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He ran his hands through my hair and kissed my forehead. There are invisible marks on all the places he has kissed me. They tingle when I think of him. 

“I’m only telling you. There are so many things wrong with me.”

“Nothing is wrong with you. You’re perfect.”

“Oh god, don’t. No one is perfect.”

“You are to me.” He kissed me more. “I loved waking up next to you, by the way.”

“Me too.”

“You must have been dreaming about something funny. You kept giggling in your sleep.”

“I don’t remember what I dreamed. Maybe I’m just happy.”

…

It will happen in the quiet hours of the morning. It will happen as I stand in the kitchen, my room, at the park, in line at the grocery store. I’ll feel his breath on my neck.

We were having a hard time keeping our hands off each other. Even when Susan was there, we’d sneak little back touches, steal glances at one another and stare until our tasks pulled us back in. It was like our minds were running parallel to each other. We knew what we wanted and we knew it was going to happen soon.

I’ll remember one day near the end of June, we were alone. I was calibrating scales for the next day when he came from behind and closed his arms around my body. I acted shy, though I wanted him to close in tighter, wanted him to dig his fingers into my ribs until it hurt. Fuck, I wanted him to fuck me. He compared me to heroin, how he’d been wanting to touch me all day, and I told him he’ll never understand how much he is like drugs to me, but better. I told him how my muscles and veins were like air since I’ve met him.

He’ll never know how I broke down crying trying to make my bed, how I wanted to die when he left me.

He’ll never know that that afternoon in June, how when he pulled me into the corner, out of sight from the security camera and grabbed the front of my pants when he whispered “fuck, you’re so  _ hard _ ,” my brain melted into my spinal cord like hot steel, though he may have tasted my metallic mouth, felt my heart beating in his heart. 

God, Craig, I was so vulnerable. I felt safe with you.

I hope you cried how I cried. After it was all said and done, I hope you fucking felt everything I felt. I hope you cried.

  
  
  



	21. goat's rue (reason)

RE: Kyle Broflovski

Statement of Intent for Graduate School

Vers. 1

My work centers on the preservation of our world through sustainable energy. For my entire academic career, and even before then, I’ve had a passion for environmental science, specifically horticulture and organic chemistry. During my time at the University of Colorado - Boulder, I worked in our department’s greenhouse. While working there I had some say in what our team grew. I also learned how to diagnose illness and other malfunctions in plants.

**did you know that a plant deprived of sunlight will stretch itself as far as it fucking can to reach the god damn sun? sometimes stretching itself so far it DIES in the process, the human equivalent being snapping your own neck to escape a collapsing building, trying to breathe anything that isn’t cinder dust again-**

You will have noticed on my transcript that there are gaps in between semesters and a few classes with no credits. I can explain this. For a period of my life, I was homeless and only able to attend school sporadically. I failed some classes because there were weeks on end where I couldn’t find it in me to get up and go to school, I hated myself so much, I hated my life, I hated what happened to me, I hated I hated I hated, I hated everything. I wanted to kill myself. I felt too dumb for college anyway - I’m not exactly society’s best. 

But I’m better now. I’m working on getting better.

I’m not sending this letter to you. I’ll write a better one when my brain isn’t a bucket of dead moths.


	22. iris (a message for you)

I have never broken a bone, but I’ve had stitches. Besides the ones I had in my face, anyway.

In third grade, breaking an arm or a leg was an epidemic. Call it something in the air, I don’t know. But it meant instant popularity. Us runny-nosed, buck-toothed kids would gallop over in our icy boots to sign their casts. I asked one kid if the bone tore through his skin and he said No, That Would Be So Freaking Cool Dude.

One afternoon at recess, a kid was pushing me on the swings. She said  _ something _ , I don’t remember, so I called her a gaywad and she pushed me so hard that I fell off and landed in red mulch, still damp from morning rain. Pieces clung to my clothes. My elbows ached. When I raised my arms, the girl gasped. A glass shard, sticking up just enough from the mulch, stabbed me in the wrist and I was gushing blood. We went to our teacher and she told me to go wash up in the bathroom. So I did. But the blood kept coming when I took my wrist away from the faucet, and I was getting woozy, so I went to the nurse, and from there, the nurse called my mom. The gash was too deep for her to slap a bandage on and call it a day.

The doctor said I was lucky (there’s that damn word again) - the glass narrowly missed a big vein. Saved my mom from having to buy a child-sized casket.

“Does it hurt a lot,  _ bubbe _ ?” My mom asked.

“No, I think the little dolphins in my brain are working.”

“The… dolphins?”

“Yeah, the endolphins in my brain? The ones that make you feel good?”

“Honey,” the doctor said, poking in the first stitch, “those are  _ endorphins _ .”

And then I passed out.

You can’t see the scar now, since it’s blacked out from my tattoo sleeve. 

When I told Craig this story, he first commented on it being adorable, clearly, I misheard my teacher when she was teaching us about our brains. He also said, “I had a dolphin-themed birthday party hen I was nine. That’s so funny. It was so whack: dolphin plates, blue plastic forks and knives, silver streamers, dolphin videos playing on the living room TV, dolphin cake, pin the blow-hole on the dolphin…”

I said, “I dreamed once that my dad was a dolphin.”

“Like an actual dolphin with your dad’s voice?”

“No, my human dad, but he was, like, dolphin-shaped.”

“That’s terrifying.”

I hope someone went back and cleared out any other pieces of glass that were left. Weird to think my dried up DNA might still be buried somewhere in a playground. Or the glass was recycled.

I was disappointed because I didn’t break a bone. I wanted signatures on a cast. Sure, people wanted to see my stitches and the yellow pasty medicine I had to put on it, but that didn’t last long.

Some satisfaction came at the end of the semester when our yearbooks were given to us. Little plastic blue books smattered with post 9/11 grief (it happened only nine months prior). I still have it. The theme is “Liberty’s Kids,” and there is an American flag watermark on every page. In my grayscale square, my hair is all askew and poofy, and my eyes are thin and black (pupils are huge).

There are a lot of signatures in the back. A lot of phone numbers that are surely landlines and no longer in use. Clyde wrote his name the largest, with red marker.

I think of this now because it was approaching Independence Day, and Craig was glaring down fireworks stands, barbecue displays, and flipping off Uncle Sam - my dude was fucking feral.

But we had half the week off for the holiday, and he wasn’t able to be mad about that. Craig needed a break, badly. He was sporting sallow cheeks and dark bags under his eyes. His pants shirts were a little looser. One day he’d be confident, blowing through experiment after experiment, the next day he’d have his head plopped on the counter, convinced there was no way he could carry on. I told him to step back now and then because you can’t see the whole forest if you’re too focused on one tree.

The night before the last workday, before vacation, he said, “I don’t feel like I’m doing the right things. I never feel like I do the right thing. I try… but I just can’t latch on.” We were in the hall where I said “nice meeting you,” on the first day.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said, slumping against the wall. His backpack and lunchbox slid on the marble floor. 

I laid a finger on his chest, traced it up to his face, and centered on his forehead. “Remember what you told me? It was good advice. You should follow it.”

He smiled weakly and kissed my hand, but said nothing.

“Are you sure there isn’t anything else bothering you?” I asked, gesturing to his lunchbox of untouched snacks. “You didn’t eat much today.”

“I’m fine, just a little stressed, I guess.”

I didn’t believe him. Something in his face said there was more, much more, but I couldn’t bring myself to press. He could say what he needed to when he was ready.

“Well… I think you should stay with me this weekend.”

“Oh? You do?” He clasped his hands around the back of my neck. 

“I do. I think you should stay over, have some edibles. We can watch Kenny and Cartman blow off a few fingers-”

“-delightful-”

“-binge the new  _ Stranger Things _ , wait, do you like  _ Stranger Things _ ?”

“Yeah, I’ve only seen the first season though.”

“Okay then, we’re going to binge the second season and the third one when it’s released. You’re going to get some rest, and when we come back Monday, you’ll feel better.”

“I like that plan, but…”

“Hm?”

“I have to go to my mom’s for a barbeque. She’s been planning it forever. Her boyfriend bought all these fucking fireworks and now he has to show them off.”

“Oh, that’s fine, you can come over after. And please crawl directly into my bed.”

A half-smile from him.

“What?” I asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Do you want to come?”

“To your mom’s?”

“Yes. She really wants to meet you.”

“Your mom knows about me?”

“I don’t shut up about you.” 

“Oh, stop.”

“Make me, _bärchen_.”

“You’re on thin ice, Tucker.”

“Oh  _ godddd  _ please don’t use my last name like that. I hate my name. It sounds like Fucker.”

“I never thought of that. You shouldn’t have told me. Craig Fucker it is.”

“Stooooppp.”

“Well if you hate your last name so much, you can have mine.”

I turned so red when I said that. I’m an actual idiot. Anyone else would have been massively creeped out, and I thought for sure he’d be creeped, but he kissed me instead. Flickers of sunlight warmed our faces in soft, scant spots. 

“Cool, so I’m telling my mom we’re engaged then.”

“What! Don’t do that!”

“Chill, I’m joking.”

“You’re so freaking monotone, I can’t tell when you’re joking sometimes.”

“And you get super shrill, super aggressive. I think we’re meant to be. You’re like mayonnaise to my tuna.”

“I… have no words.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame you. I understand if you want a divorce.”

“I’m going to file the papers now.”

He picked up his lunchbox and slung his backpack over his shoulder again, laughing. “So, you want to come?”

“Is there going to be a lot of people?”

“Maybe a medium-sized amount of people.”

“Oh.”

“Does that make you nervous?”

“A little. But it’s okay.  Let me pop half a Xanax and some hard seltzer, I’ll be fine.”

“Jesus, Kyle.”

“What? I can’t raw dog reality how you can.”

He shook his head and we started walking down the hall, his hand on the small of my back.

…

“Oh, you’re in deep now,” Cartman said that night. His last client had left ten minutes prior and he was cleaning up. I was hanging around in the doorway, rambling about how nervous I was going to this barbeque. “You’re meeting his family already, next thing you know you’re going to be stowing away together to go live on an alpaca farm.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“So he’s going to be staying over here?”

“Yes, so don’t be an asshole.”

“That’s asking too much.”

“Cartman.”

“Hey, according to you, Craig is an asshole. I can’t have him come on my turf and out asshole me.”

“...”

“Fine. I’ll control myself.”

…

Avocado green, yellow, and red, Laura Tucker’s kitchen reminded me of this hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant my father and I used to go to when my mother took Ike to tennis practice. Before that, I noticed the landscaping in her front yard. She had those curving bricks that I’ve always wanted, fairy lights and sunflowers, cone-shaped shrubs that lined underneath the windows.

Tricia stepped out of the house, flip-flops squelching in the driveway as she ran up to us.

“Mom is drunk already.”

“Great…”

Then she turned to me. “Hi, Kyle. Long time, no see.”

“Hey… uh, your mom did a nice job on her garden here.”

“Yeah, she likes to keep her bushes trimmed.”

“Tricia, you’re disgusting.” Craig grabbed my hand and walked us past her.

“ _ You’re _ disgusting. When was the last time you washed that grease trap on your head? Kyle, you can’t just let him walk around like that.”

“I thought it was hair gel…”

“It  _ is _ hair gel!”

I leaned and sniffed. “Old Spice.”

“Looks greasy to me.”

“Maybe you used a little too much, babe.”

“I can’t believe you’re both attacking me like this!”

Tricia followed us into the front door and the living room, where a handful of children sat, eating cut-up hotdogs on a chunky plastic table, and watching cartoons. As soon as they saw Craig, they pounced:

“Craig! Craig! I got a bike for my birthday and it has a BASKET-”

“-look at this new dance I learned-” Violent wiggling.

“-we’re going to see FIREWORKS today-”

“-dad says he doesn’t want a cat but I think should get a cat because cats are fluffy and you can pet them and they rumble like rocket ships-”

“-it has a BASKET-”

“-who is this guy?” Pointing at me. “Hey mister, how many tattoos do you have?”

“Guys, guys, one speaker at a time, please,” said Craig. “This is Kyle.”

“Oh boy,” Tricia breathed from behind me. “Here we go.”

“KYLE do you like trucks?! I have a truck that I put on my bike basket so I can give it a break from driving all the time.”

“KYLE do you have CATS? I really want a cat…”

“Are you going to watch the fireworks with us? I hope you stay for the fireworks-”

“-WHOA YOU HAVE KILLER WHALES ON YOUR ARM-”

“-are you Craig’s boyfriend?”

“BOYFRIEND?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they rub wieners, dummy.”

“WOW.”

Craig sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Kyle, these are my cousin’s kids: Jacob, Janelle, Jenna, and Joshua.”

“Nice to meet you, ‘J’ children,” I said.

The littlest one, which I believe was Joshua, pulled on my shorts. “Can we go play outside?”

Craig turned him back to the table. “Finish your dinner. Let us go say hi to everyone and we’ll play later, okay?”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Then he took me into that Italian restaurant of a kitchen where a little blonde woman was laughing loudly, accompanied by a slew of people young and old. When she spotted us, she shrieked with glee and jumped over, eyes half-lidded, and put her arms around me.

“You must be Kyle! It’s so great to finally meet you. Oh,  _ wowwww,  _ look at you! You’re like a painting in motion, turn around, turn around.” She spun me around. As Craig’s face blurred by I could see him groaning. Her voice had the same slight nasal quality as Craig’s. If I didn’t know what I knew, I would have believed she was Craig’s biological mother based on that alone.

“It’s great to meet you too.”

She parted from me and held my shoulders.

“Hi Mom,” Craig stepped out from behind me.

“Why are you just standing there, Craig? Get this boy a beer - oh wait, Craig said you’re a barista. Do you want coffee? I can make you some coffee.”

“Oh no, haha, I don’t just drink coffee…”

“I think  _ you _ need coffee, Mom,” Tricia barked, “You’re practically groping Kyle.”

“Oh, pish.” Laura scrunched up her face and waved in front of her nose like she was fending off a fart. “Silly.”

A short man with a waxy bald head waddled over to us. 

Laura said, “This is my boyfriend, Curl.”

“Curl?”

“More like Hurl…” Tricia whispered.

“It’s  _ Carl _ ,” whispered Craig.

“Oh, hello Carl,” I said.

Curl/Hurl/Carl immediately lifted his beige polo to reveal a large cast around his midsection. “ I fell off a horse. Man, it felt like I was falling forever. I tried to get up and I couldn’t walk. Man. I went to the doctor, well, Laura here drove me to the doctor because my Jeep is in the shop - damn thing has rusty ball joints and usually that’s a quick fix but the guy who usually fixes my Jeep is busy, he’s got a waiting list and everything, but I told him I’d wait because he’s the only guy I trust to work on it. Everyone else tries to rip me off. You know, this one time I went to get my oil changed and the kid working there tried to upsell me on a tire rotation? Oh, and he says I need to change my transmission fluid. I said ‘well that’s funny because I just changed it myself’ and the kid says ‘well it went rotten already’ and I said ‘how the hell does fluid go rotten’ and he got all offended and said ‘sir, that’s just how I word things, you don’t need to make fun of me,’ so I said, ‘hey, aren’t you Lester Arnold’s kid?’ and he goes ‘yeah sir I am’ and I said ‘your dad was a  _ punk _ in high school’ and this brat goes off on me about how he doesn’t care about what some Boomer thinks, to stop talking about his dad, so I said ‘man I don’t need this.’ So I drove off. But anyway I shattered my tailbone and Laura here had to put temporary handles on the toilet so I don’t fall off when I wipe myself.”

“...glad you’re okay, Carl.”

I confronted Craig later about making me stand there listening to that stupid story, but he just held his gut and giggled, unable to speak.

By this point, Tricia went outside and left us with Drunk Laura, Tailbone Carl, and a chapter of friends and family that Craig pointed out to me. They each gave a little wave as he called off their names.

Later, Craig pulled me up to the man who was grilling on the back porch. He was old but seemed chipper. I saw right away that a Star of David hung from his neck. 

“Kyle, this is our neighbor Akim.” Before I could open my mouth to say  _ shalom _ , Craig continued, “Akim,  _ zeh hah-khah-ver sheh-lee,  _ Kyle.”

I was a bit taken aback - I’d never heard Craig speak a lick of Hebrew before, and it took to a mental cistern that had been dry for over ten years.

I smiled, extending my hand, “ _ Shalom, na-eem lehakir otkha _ .”

The man pulled me into a hug and I could feel the heat from the grill radiating on my arm. We spoke for a few minutes in Hebrew while Craig watched with his head cocked. He talked about his family extensively and I talked about mine, pretending that I’m still in contact with them. When we were done and walking on to the backyard, I turned to Craig “when did you start learning Hebrew?”

“Uh… yesterday. I just thought it would be nice to know some. How did I do?”

“Great. Your pronunciation was a little bit off, but I understood what you were saying, so it’s okay.”

“Any tips?”

“You’ve got to put your throat into it.”

“Well, you already know I’m good at that.”

“Craig!” I whisper-screamed.

He grinned with his tongue out slightly, then bent down and reached into a cooler. “You want a grape soda?”

“Please…” I looked over my shoulder at Akim, who was sliding a burger onto someone’s paper plate. Craig put the cold can in my hand. I snapped it open and sucked the fizz off. “You introduced me as your boyfriend. You know that right?”

He smiled. “Yeah. I know.”

“You never really asked me to be your boyfriend.”

“I thought we were engaged.”

“Stop joking like that, someone’s going to hear you and get all excited.”

“Fiiinnee. Dude, be my boyfriend.”

“Now it just sounds like you’re threatening me.”

“Maybe I am.”

“You’re such a brat.”

“Exactly.”

“I swear if we weren’t surrounded by people right now, I’d bend you over on the-”

“-Hey, there he is!” Another cousin waltzed over, her cheeks painted with red (almost as bright as her hair), white, and blue stripes, and a Budweiser in one hand. The tribe of “J” spawns was in tow behind her. They’d already begun asking her when they could get tattoos like “Mister Kyle.”

I have to say, even though it was overwhelming at first and I probably came off as super awkward, I adored Craig’s family. His mom was sweet, Tricia is hilarious, Carl was a little weird but he gave off benign stepdad energy that was comfortable. Even the little cousins, I found, I was getting better at talking to as the night went on. Kids ask so many questions, but I liked talking to them. They said exactly what they think and how they feel, and I hope they never stop. 

As the sun set, people lined up towels and lawn chairs to watch Carl and the kids light sparklers. Craig brought down an oversized blue hoodie from his childhood closet - a kid’s room turned into office space - and gave it to me because I was shivering. I whipped the hood over my head and pulled the drawstrings so it cinched my face.

Craig was off in the distance, helping line up some of the bigger fireworks, so I sat by Akim. We chatted for a while in bits of Hebrew and English, then, after some silence, he said, “Craig is a good kid.”

I pulled my knees to my chest and nodded. “He’s great.”

“His parents were so worried about him. Then again, Thomas’s drinking didn’t help either. I don’t get it. When you adopt a kid, you can’t go around doing stuff like that.”

I glanced at Akim, “It was that bad?”

“ _ Ken _ ,  _ al ha-panim.  _ I can’t tell you how many times little Craig and little Tricia were hanging out in my kitchen all afternoon because Thomas and Laura were fighting. I had one of those TVs with the VCR and they just watched tapes and ate string cheese all the time. I can’t believe Laura stayed married as long as she did.”

I couldn’t believe Craig still lived with this asshole. I think he still does. Unless he’s moved in with a new boyfriend by now. Fuck.

Craig waved to me. I gave a small wave back.

“He never told me about that,” I said.

“Bah. It doesn’t matter now. I’ll tell you what, Laura did a hell of a job raising him, despite all that. It couldn’t have been easy on him, either.”

“No…”

“Sad, too. His mother was only 14 when she gave birth to him.”

“Sorry?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Craig hasn’t said a word about it.”

“Then I won’t either.”

I never expected Craig to up and tell me he was the result of teen pregnancy, but Craig also said he knew nothing about his mother. And was sincere about it. I was beginning to suspect that Akim was told things by Laura that Craig possibly didn’t know. I raised another can of grape soda to my lips and smiled as if I knew nothing, when Craig was walking back to us.

Craig plopped down next to me and scooted me closer to his body in the night as we watched fizzling brilliant greens and vivid purples, white crackles, and booming blues until the last ash floated back down to earth.


	23. magnolia (sweetness)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hey folx, just wanted to try writing a note that would somehow encompass an apology but also gratitude in the same vein. I apologize for the infrequent updates (once a month basically). I work with my hands a lot and I’m still having issues with wrist pain. My hand often stiffens quickly. In addition, I’ve just been depressed. Like so, so many people right now, I too have been feeling very hopeless, and tired. Loss of appetite, motivation, etc. There’s also a nagging voice in the back of my head who tells me to quit whenever I’m sitting down to write. The physical pain of my wrist just gives the voice more reasoning for their cause.   
> Despite all that, I’ve loved writing this story so far. I love Cryle, and I love that other people who love Cryle have been enjoying this story so far. Even if it’s “just fanfiction,” (as I’ve been told) I don’t want to give up. Writing is writing, no matter what form, and it brings joy to see a project all the way through. I’m trying to let myself feel joy.  
> Thank you so much for reading, whether you’re just now stepping into it or have been reading since April - thank you <3  
> So, here’s to switching to my left hand, and here’s to giving Kyle the character arc he deserves.  
> Cheers,  
> Kyle, Your Local Garbage Gay

I hummed an old song to myself, I couldn’t remember the name (I think it was “Sonny Came Home”? I must have heard it at the barbeque). But the melody was caught in my brain, in the background of Craig’s soft laughing as he held my hands, looking up to me as I walked backward up the stairs, leading him up as if he were a giddy, smiling lamb. He wasn’t drunk or high. He was happy. I had to shush him with my own mouth.

It was 2 am and I could hear Cartman’s snores all the way from the end of the hall.

Both of us passed out as soon as we touched my bed.

* * *

There was a day in July where it rained from sunrise to sundown, and anyone who lived on a dirt road in South Park was fucked if they wanted to leave thier house. Mud was fucking everywhere. 

I left my parents’ house that morning in rainboots and an old hooded windbreaker that made swishing noises when I moved my arms. All of us, miffed by the mugginess and miserable, smelled like wet, hormonal dogs. 

Clyde and I watched his friends - a group of four brothers, the oldest just graduating from college, and the younger triplets who went to Columbine- put chains on their father’s truck tires, put the truck in park and hit the gas just to watch it spray mud. It was either that or do drugs, but someone had cut our last bag of cokecaine with laxative and we were still store from the experience. After three hours in the bathroom, Clyde sought out the guy who sold it to us and held him over the bridge at Stark’s Pond until he gave us our money back.

I went home that night, and when the rain tapered off, snuck out at midnight. Our boots squelched in the cornfields of McCreary’s Farm, around a dilapidated barn and a club of grazing cows.

“Look at them. They don’t even know what’s about to happen,” Clyde said, squatting next to a rusty tractor and lighting up a cigarette.

I stood close to him, hoping the cigarette smoke would mask the manure fumes.

“I think those are the dairy cows,” I said. One of them looked up at me. “Hi, buddy.”

The cow started, unblinking, then mechanically bent down and resumed chewing grass.

“Wow, that’s like, exactly what happened when you asked out that girl at 7-11,” Clyde said.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Clyde just laughed, which stirred more cows to leer at us.

I shifted, shoved my fists in my pockets. Clyde slid into the dirt.

“You’re going to get muddy.”

“It’s fine.”

I don’t often miss my hometown, and I doubt it misses me, but I still think of those nights where you could see the entire night sky, unencumbered by light pollution. It was black. Just us and the cows under a net of dotted stars and cotton streams of white. All I could see was the shining cow eyes, he tractor that looked like a boxy, shadow monster, and the red, glowing end of Clyde’s cigarette, not frantically bobbing like how it did the night he died, but still, as if i were his own small sun.

“When Mom died-”

It wasn’t unusual for him to begin sentences this way. Soft segues into a memory or line of thinking was not Clyde’s specialty. I was used to it, even adopting the language myself (“After Clyde died…”). I can’t say  _ passed away, _ because he’d never want me to.

“Passed away? Yeah, I  _ passed _ through a fucking windshield. Jesus Christ, just say I fucking died, Kyle.” That’s what I imagine him telling me. I’d say the same, had the roles been reversed. Just say I fucking died.

“When Mom, died, my dad said she’d be watching down on me.” He drew circles in the air with smoke. “I believed him because I was a stupid kid, but I shouldn’t have. There isn’t shit up there.”

I couldn’t gauge if he wanted me to say something or if he only needed to be listened to. I waited. I shivered. 

“If Mom is up there, she’s probably turned her face away from me now.”

I stepped over and slumped down next to him. The gound was still damp and the tractor was warm against my back.

“I doubt that,” I said softly. “I doubt that very much.”

“Guess I’ll never know. I don’t even know if I want to think about it anymore. It makes me tired, thinking about it.”

We sat there until sunrise, dozing in and out, watching cows graze, passing cigarettes, and enjoying the silence.

* * *

My headache woke me up. I was shivering, cold sweating, too wet to be comfortable, but my back was warm. I remembered my dream and realized I must have had a minor episode in my sleep. The wet grass, the warm tractor. Did I speak? I could still smell the manure. 

A massive dragonfly hovered outside my window. Craig was gone. Or so I thought until I heard a snore. I peeked over the bed to see him on his stomach, one arm bent behind his back like a collapsed marionette. I rolled down to the floor, pulled my knees to my chest and watched for some  **time** as he breathed. I was (I am) in the same clothes as yesterday, as was he, shirt lifted so I could see the bumps of his spine. We were sacrosanct, untouchable, framed in another moment I wanted blown into glass. My mouth on my arm, wondering if that warmth is what it’s like to kiss me. I closed my eyes, waiting for him to open his, listened to my heart beat in sync witht he dragonfly  _ tap tap tapping _ on the window.

Summer was halfway over.

I nudged his shoulder.

“Hey, pretzel boy.”

He awake with a sharp inhale, eyes wide. “Ah, fuck.”

Groaning, he rolled over onto his back. 

“Why are you on the floor?”

“You don’t know?” His face was scrunched as he stretched out his arms. “You kicked me off.”

“Really? Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Eh, it’s fine. You’ve got some strong hams though, damn.”

“You didn’t have to stay on the floor…”

“I was too tired to get back up. Though, next time I stay over, I’m bringing a sleeping bag.”

“I feel awful now.”

“Oh, stop. Really, it’s okay.”

I looked down at my socks and smiled to myself. Craig turned on his side, propped up on his elbow.

“What did you dream about?” he asked.

“What did I dream?”

“Do you remember? You were talking in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

“I couldn’t understand all of it, but I remember hearing  _ I don’t want to think anymore _ .”

It was Clyde talking through me and my memories. I knew that as soon as Craig said it. It’s a very Clyde thing to say.

“I was talking to some cows,” I said. 

“Did the cows talk back?”

I snorted. “No? Of course not.”

“Well, it’s a  _ dream _ , cows can speak in those.”

“Not in mine, apparently.”

He laughed to himself, tracing his finger in the carpet for awhile. 

Then, he said, “I did something tacky.”

“Tacky?”

“Kind of.”

I watched him grab his phone, thrown askew by the nightstand, and tap around for a few seconds, then turn the screen to me. It was a playlist he curated… for me. The name: “for him.”

Scrolling through, I noted some of the bands. Some I knew, some I had never heard of. 

“This isn’t tacky… this is sweet.”

“You think so? I… I don’t have the best music taste but I know you like pop-punk so I tried my best.”

“I love this. When did you do this?”

“The night after our fist date.”

“I didn’t realize you liked me this much.”

Again, he laughed softly to the floor, face turning red. The carpet marks on his temple were fading. 

* * *

Tissue box on my lap, I tried to tell Dr. T’Soni what happened, that first time she asked. I could only speak of him for five minutes. Vignettes of incoherent whines came out. Sounds that my father would smack me in the back of my head for making.

Eventually, we stretched those whines to ten minutes, then fifteen. Anything I forget, I can write here.

She asked me if I believed I could love someone again. I said Maybe. Maybe, But It’ll Have To Be A Long Time From Now.

Truth is, I don’t know. I don’t want to. I have nothing to give that anyone would want.

There are things here that I will not read to her.

* * *

A memory I’m not sure is real or not:

He comes outside in an oversized tee-shirt, sleeves rolled up to the shoulders and paint-stained (or bleach?) shorts.

“I did it again,” he says, and shows me his finger, spliced at the seam of his knuckle. I’m on my hands and knees, shoveling away dirt to make steeper holes for a cobblestone path that I want, so he has to bend down slightly to show me. I suck in air through my teeth to sympathize. He tilts back up and sucks away the blood, the smack of his lips like he’s wine tasting. 

“I’m a liability,” he says.

“One of these days you’ll cut your whole damn finger off.”

I’ve dropped my small shovel and nicked the inside of my arm. Now  _ I’m _ bleeding. Craig sucks air through his teeth.

A memory I  know is real:

Craig. Nervous.

Nervous as I was, hanging around his family, but taking it in stride and getting along with Stan, Wendy, Kenny, and even Cartman! Turns out they have more in common then they thought (love of breakfast food, right down to stacked crepes and the new jingle that plays from the chip reader at the grocery store). I never told Craig why Cartman went to juvie, but Cartman proudly volunteers, says ARSON with his chest, spells out the word in the air as if the invisible letters themselves will catch fire, and Craig says Wow very coolly, not impressed at all but fascinated, maybe a bit scared.

Kenny chirps into the conversation and asks Craig if he’d ever get a tattoo. Craig says he’d maybe get one or two, but can’t picture himself being as covered as I am. I say that I won’t stop until I reach my face, give me all the colors. Kelso purrs in my lap.

Stan flips through the channels, eating a brownie, while Wendy is dragging a feather across the floor for Donna. All of us are high. 

I can’t tell how high Craig is, he’s mellow all the time anyway. Cartman has informed us he’s been blocked by his Kelly Clarkson doppelganger girlfriend and tries to freestyle rap about how it made him feel ( _ from “babe” to “blocked”/ got my love gun half-cocked _ ). Stan’s mouth hangs open, watching the back of Cartman’s head as he tries to spit verse and drops the remote. He’s too high to pick it back up off the floor so we’re stuck on this channel with a loud AAA commercial. Out of nowhere, Kenny whips out a sketchbook and flips to a drawing of a clown fisting a shocked balloon animal, and asks if he can tattoo it on Craig for his portfolio and Craig politely declines, explaining that it’s not his style. I say I’ll do it if the drawing looks more consensual.

The volume of the resuming TV program jolts us, and we see two teenage boys - white, gross, awkward, and in the front seat of a speeding car. What looks like behind them is a green screen effect with flashing police lights. The passenger is panicking, turning every which way. He’s holding a knife to the driver.

“Turn it off…” I say. No one does anything.

Dramatic, quivering music. The passenger grabs the wheel. The screen goes black and there’s a car crash sound effect. Scraping metal and oh fuck, I can’t. A deep-voiced narrator speaks but we don’t know what he says because my mugshot glows on the screen and it makes me scream.

I stand up. The cat runs and hides under the couch.

I’m screaming: “TURN IT OFF! TURN IT THE FUCK OFF!”

Wendy fumbles, finds the remote and switches it the fuck off. Crackling in the back of the TV. Everyone is staring at me. I wipe my eyes with my sleeves. “What the fuck…”

Craig touched my hip. “Hey-”

“-don’t touch me! God, please don’t touch me!”

My breath is ripped out. My brain is somewhere else, sucked into celestial figures, and I wish my body was there, too. I…


End file.
